Polonia / Elon Musk tells Germans to "move on"! [247]

@Marrakesh,
Don't know from which corner of the universe you are (although I have a pretty good guess) but
if you're selling "cultural relativism" as pitched by Germany's
revisionist historians, go peddle your propaganda elsewhere!

First of all, devious, indeed, ignoble as many acts of the US have
been throughout our short history, from the Indian Massacres
during the latter half of the 19th century up through the Tulsa Massacre
in the mid-1920's, nothing quite holds a candle to the unrelenting,
systematic sadism of the planned extermination of nearly 11 million
Jews, along with Sinti-Roma at the hands of the Nazis between 1937-
1944. Slavery here at home, horrible and unforgivable, did not involve the depopulation of
sections of the United States for the purposes of expunging an entire race.

While John Perkins's "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" does lay a large degree of
blame for 9/11 at America's doorstep as corporate provocateur, impoverishing much of the
Third World, especially poor Muslim nations, mere mention of same alongside the Holocaust
beggars comparison from a sheer historical perspective.

Polonia / Elon Musk tells Germans to "move on"! [247]

Many years ago around 1968, Dr. Alexander Mitscherlich, a German psychiatrist,, along with his wife Margarethe, also a psychiatrist, wrote
a pathbreaking work which I had to the privilege to read, "The Inability To Mourn" (German
original title "Die Unfaehigkeit zu trauern: eine deutsche Art zu lieben"), an examination of the immediate post-War years during which,
in wake of the Nueremberg Trials, the Allies essentially rubbed Germany's nose in the horrors of the Holocaust.

As a result, Germans were faced with an international image of themselves as all Nazis, murderers or scared rabbits who buried their head in the
sand and steadfastly refused to acknowledge the crimes of Hitler, forever blaming such on "others" instead of taking that long, hard look at each other.

This gradually grew into both a deep resentment of foreigners telling them what and how they as Germans should have acted. Later on, it developed
into a sort of "empathy fatigue" vis-a-vis the Holocaust, Hitler, and anything connected with the Nazi period.

Musk seems to have tapped into this feeling and it's disgusting!!

Off-Topic / AfD Party is growing ever more powerful throughout country [120]

Oh, yes. The late Alexander Gauland was its founding member.

Off-Topic / AfD Party is growing ever more powerful throughout country [120]

While you're quizzing me, the AfD or Alternative fuer Deutschland, was begun as far back as the late 1990's,
merely gaining ground in the '00's with Frauke Petry, Gedeon, among others. It's current "leader" is Bjorn Hoecke
and if he had his way, all Holocaust education, monuments etc. would be dismantled or discontinued, all non-white
European, white North American, Canadian foreigners would be booted out of Germany and possibly the FRG might
even secede from NATO as well as the entire EURO-Zone!!

This is dangerous, dangerous stuff man, and the only thing I can say about Trump is that
he has an Indian-born wife of his VP and he's including the Hispanic Marco Rubio in his
cabinet. Obviously, these are business, not humanitarian, concessions.

Off-Topic / AfD Party is growing ever more powerful throughout country [120]

You obviously don't understand the AfD or you'd realize that the SPD or
a reasonable coalition of like-minded parties is the only salvation for Germany!

Off-Topic / AfD Party is growing ever more powerful throughout country [120]

All a matter of opinion!

Trump is once again merrily throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
While there was plenty wrong with the Civil Rights Era, there was also
some good.

He lives in a fictional past when everyone was a White Protestant native
born American and there were few to any foreigners afoot. We call this
bunk TV Land, Fantasy Land,.......DISNEYLAND!!!!

Trump's own grandfather came from Germany, his mother from Scotland,
but 'cuz they're white Christians, guess that doesn't count LOL

Po polsku / Nowy film "Osiol" [12]

Wresczie zgodzimy sie, Rysku!

@Pawku,
Dzieki

History / Why Poland is not Russia [260]

Sorry to burst your Russian bubble, Bobko my dear, but Mickiewicz was a POLE in body, spirit, and soul,
who merely happened to have been born in then Lithuania when it belonged to Poland!!
Although in the opening lines of his epic, he claims "Litwa" as his fatherland (literally speaking in Polish),
he wrote, he expressed himself in Polish and not either in Lithuanian or Russian, the origin of both his
parents notwithstanding.

Chopin or Szopen, for example, was born in Poland to a Polish mother and a French father, yet thought of himself
as a "Pole in exile" and his mother tongue, the language of music, is Polish z krwi i kosci.

Po polsku / Nowy film "Osiol" [12]

Tak, jestem osiolem (glupotem)! lol

History / Differences between Poland and Russia [78]

@Pawian, you raise a solid point which I apparently overlooked, thanks:-)

UK, Ireland / English/British rudeness - what do Polish people think about it? [168]

Although I'm not Polish, as an American I too have found Brits, both at home and abroad, often
chronically snide, almost condescending, though not especially pompous or opinionated like many
French, Swedes or the Austrians!

Just recently, my wife and I returned to Forest Hills, Queens to pay a visit on some friends of ours
whom we hadn't seen in years since moving her to New Jersey. At the restaurant, we were all
seated at the bar waiting for our table, when I dropped some change which almost rolled under the bar.
A youngish woman from the UK, judging from her strong London accent, picked it up for me unsolicited
for which I obviously thanked her with a "Thank you so much, madam!", at which point, she retorted, "Sir,
I'm not a madam!! That really makes a bad impression, don't you think?"

My wife and our friends found such a direct, in-your-face response as the very height of rudeness.

History / Differences between Poland and Russia [78]

Historically, Poland has often been forced to take a back seat to her larger, more powerful
neighbor to the East, not willingly, but simply by means of Russia's cultural and geopolitical
hegemony!

For centuries, Poland has sought to get free of the yoke of German and Russian domination,
yet has remained subjugated by Moscow and has been made to feel like a backwater.

UK, Ireland / Polish vs Irish stereotypes from a Polish girl in Ireland [22]

Just an expression, Rich, come one!

Travel / Hiking around Zakopane/ Tatra mountains [33]

I knew a Polish colleague who often vacationed in Zakopane during the winter and
said that it was there as a teen he first encountered the goral and their unusual dialect!

Always wonder whether or not they speak a regional variation of "standard" Polish or a
separate language.

Life / What do Polish people talk about? [56]

Europeans in general tend to discuss politics, sex, and religion far more openly
than is the custom in my experience here in the States!

Other nationalites as well, Brazilians for example, find North Americans unusually
repressed and superficial, at least as concerns conversation, especially at parties.

From having lived in Germany for a spell, by contrast, Americans don't seem to talk about
much of anything substantive. Poles are similar to Germans in terms of their topics of conversation, I find.

News / Does Polish hotel have right to turn down Americans and Israelis? [79]

Unfortunately, any private business DOES have the (im-)perfect, legal right to
refuse service to select guests, odious as the reason might be!

This privilege extends as well to non-publically funded transportation. For instance,
in Brooklyn, NY, not far from where I grew up, a bus for Orthodox refused both to allow
women to be seated beside men, but even to permit an African-American from riding in
the same bus. The gentleman naturally sued....and lost. The reason? Said bus service
was not publically funded, therefore, the driver and his company had the right to refuse
certain passengers.

Were it a regular public bus route, that driver would have been toast:-)

Off-Topic / God and Religion Talk [251]

G-d loves ALL His creatures! It's man who perverts His word.

Study / Can I change my Switzerland Schengen 3 months tourist visa to Poland study visa [9]

The French would, wouldn't they:-)

UK, Ireland / Polish vs Irish stereotypes from a Polish girl in Ireland [22]

In Ireland too.

Study / Can I change my Switzerland Schengen 3 months tourist visa to Poland study visa [9]

A good idea. As you mentioned Switzerland, do you perhaps also speak some French in addition to English?
Not sure if French was required in Nigeria as it is throughout much of Africa.

UK, Ireland / Polish vs Irish stereotypes from a Polish girl in Ireland [22]

Tough question as Poland too has had a strong Celtic influence over phases of her early history.

Language / News In Easy Polish (sample websites)? [13]

Easy Polish might be that a simpler vocabulary has been employed.
As Polish is a highly inflected language, surely only the lexic has been
simplified. Can't imagine how the morphology could be pared down, can you?

Study / Can I change my Switzerland Schengen 3 months tourist visa to Poland study visa [9]

When did you move from Nigeria to Switzerland?

Off-Topic / I am a polish communist. [83]

Post-war immigration proved as vital to the West German economy as it did and does to the current US infrastructure!
Somebody out there has to build the bridges, dams, clean the streets etc. and it sure isn't going to be exclusively white,
native born Americans any longer.

The W.A.S.P. hegemony is no more....even Trump and his minions can't bring it back, try as they will:-)

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1302]

Clearly the issue of culpability doesn't extend in fact to succeeding generations.
However, every country, Poland included, must bear the burdens of their history,
from which no nation is exempt, be it Palestine, Israel, France, Italy, Germany etc.

Curious though that while the Romans were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ,
we don't hate all Italians, merely because members of that time Italy (in which Rome
is located) produced a Pontius Pilate, Trajan along any number of other antisemites.

Off-Topic / I am a polish communist. [83]

Rich, in light of Germany's history, any thinking person can well understand their trepidations
about allowing untrammeled free speech at every bend and turn!

Hitler left indelible stains on Germany's future history and while you and others might see German
society as all but paralyzed, strangled, by political correctness, the alternative aka AfD. is to my mind
far more frightening.

At least Germany has been behaving herself for the past seventy-five years. We pray she continues.

Sahra Wagenknecht seems to be doing an American style Dem/Rep tango with the AfD and the SPD.
One wonders why.

News / Will Poland help defend Greenland against US Imperialism [333]

Kennedy apparently was considered a bumbler by colleagues and staffers,
but avoided the end of planet Earth with his resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis
in addition to founding the Peace Corps.

He did escalate the Vietnam Conflict, this is true, yet surrounded himself with a
coterie of intellectuals in contrast to the future Felon-in-Chief!

Even Reagan was less out of whack than Trump, although he did ruin the New Deal
forever.

News / Will Poland help defend Greenland against US Imperialism [333]

The whole idea proposed by President elect Trump is so ludicrous
as not to even warrant comment.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1302]

Often times though, the sins of the parents or the fathers in this case, are visited upon the children, unfair
as this may be.

I remind you of a once well-known publication from the late '60's or perhaps somewhat later, "Papa, hast du's getan? - Taeterkinder sprechen" (Is this what you did, papa? - Perpetrators' children speak out). Although by then the War had already been over for practically thirty years, the deep, indeed, barely healed, scars of the Hitler years, in particular the Holocaust, remained open wounds, as well as a source of bruising shame, in particular, for German nationals abroad!!