News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Holocaust denial is quite simply a hate crime as any other, a filthy insult to those who suffered and continue to suffer from that period. It is indescribably venal and sick to even give the Irvings at al the credence of taking their work seriously.

If not the eye witnesses of Allied soldiers as incontrovertible evidence, on what leg can any Holocaust denier possibly stand??

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Again, Lenka, you must distinguish between "religion" per se, as opposed to "sprituality", as for example in St. Francis' writings or the teachings of Jesus!

The Church corrupted religion, but the concept of G-d remains as sound as ever.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Sovereign airspace, guys, is subject to international law, last time I checked:-)

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Whilst I agree that organized, aka DISorganized, religion has little to do with spirituality, if Man relies solely upon himself, thinking that he has the freedom to do whatever he wants with impunity with no repercussions in the afterlife, has essentially license to commit whatever savagery he wishes and go unpunished.

The law is corruptible too, you know.

@Lenka,
Your comment escapes me, I'm sorry.

Law / Moving back to Poland - Healthcare [112]

I take it you're an EU national, yes? Well then, bureaucracy is part of what makes Europe what it is today.
I'm not a fan particularly, yet in terms of health care, the Nordic countries have the US beat by a country furlong!

Law / Moving back to Poland - Healthcare [112]

An intriguing question!
Having myself spent time in both countries, living for almost a year and a half in Germany some years back, I'd conclude that Sweden is doing economically better than either country. Through daily blogging and chat, I keep abreast of things in the above countries, relying too on local colleagues from each of the three.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

@Weimarer,

"We don't believe in G-d and such rubbish......" ...which is precisely the problem with post-Reformation Germany!
This is what lead to the rise of Hitler and his infatuation with paganism.

If you don't believe in such rubbish, I contend you don't believe in a moral structure then. You can't have things both ways by saying you believe in some abstract concept of "freedom", yet at the same time don't believe in a Higher Power.

G-d is the measure of all things, and who measures otherwise, measures falsely.

Finally, if you actually read Hitler's autobiography which I have (and in the original too, although Rolf Mannheim did an unusually good translation which I read through much later), you'd recall that Hitler rejected Christianity as having a "Jewish conscience", rejecting of course the entire concept of conscience in the first place:-)

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Quite right.
The Munich publishing house which once put the book out, closed down, I believe and the copyright ran out, if I'm not mistaken.

While I think it's a good thing to make students of history aware of their painful past, without the necessary annotations, provisos and editing, as with Hitler's birth place in Braunau am Inn becoming a venue for Neo-Nazis, his autobiography could easily be misused in Germany to justify Right-Wing causes.

Trust you read in yesterday's paper that Kramp Karrenbauer's out and the Right has surged ahead, causing considerable concern among many people.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

The key differences between Hitler and, say, Roosevelt, between a dictator sui generis vs. a (true) democrat whose achievements are still with us today,
show the chasmic, indeed, seismic, differences between the two nations, Germany and the US!

German history went down the "special path" (Sonderweg) of ostracism, xenophobia, authoritarianism and out-of-control demagoguery under Hitler, a complete rejection
of the Judeo-Christian tradition itself in favor of mass paganism, whereas the US under FDR sought to solve the severity of the Depression through compassion for those who needed it most, a sense or feeling of solidarity, one not based upon race-hatred but on inclusion, a desire to ameliorate through empathy, taking military steps ONLY when the most dire necessity rather than of pure brutal conquest and enslavement.

While the above is obviously a capsule summary, it hits the nail right on the head.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Torq may well be right on that score:-)

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Once again, Dirk, I'd have to disagree with your assessment of Hitler and of the National Socialist Movement. Look at the second word of

the party name to clue you in as to what their agenda was!

History / Why is Vatican traditionally on German and not on Polish side? [65]

The only Pope to date who truly built bridges between Christians and Jews in a substantive way, was Wojtyla!
During WWII, Pius sold out to Faschism in order to save face, and the Papacy got a black eye from which she hasn't yet completely recovered.

John Paul II did the most to try to heal those wounds.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Hitler was a radical RIGHT-WING "national" socialist, very definitely out of step with what later would be termed "conservative" Republicanism! He made a play of taking care of his own people, in the guise of eliminating fellow citizens deemed "non-Aryan" and hence less worthy of life. This is never defensible, whether used to justify mercy killing of the feeble-minded by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes or by a Nazi.

@Weimarer,
If you tell an idiot the same information, they'll give you an idiotic answer:-)
The danger was NEVER from the Left per se. The Left was simply responding to the excesses of the Right. Political Correctness is unfortunately a result of failed policies on the Rightist agenda which has backfired.

Liberals hearts were in the correct place, only their execution stank.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Nevertheless, Weimarer, the lessons of the Hitler period ought to remain a warning against complacency against extremism from the Far Right!

Easy answers never bring good solutions, only quick ones.
Remember, "Act in haste, repent at leisure."

Travel / Why do you visit Poland? [223]

Thanks to gumishu and kaprys.

History / Why are Poles/Poland disliked by Germans? [140]

The most luscious German dish though in my humble opinion was the very young Hildegard Knef (later "Neff" when she went to Hollyweird).
Romy Schneider and Senta Berger of course weren't too shabby either:-)

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

@Weimarer,
....and they also collaborated with the Nazis in their use of "slave labor" too. Let's keep the story straight and whole:-)
And don't gimme this, "Oh, everybody did it!", because some actually tried to go against the grain.
Not expecting the average German to have put their life on the line, necessarily, but resistance can be done in small steps as well!

Travel / Why do you visit Poland? [223]

How here's the big question: Was Kopernikus aka Kopernigk, aka Copernicus Polish or German?
After all, his home town is known by two official names, Torun or Thorn:-)

@To All:

Wife and I are planning a long-overdue trip to Europe some time next year. Stop No. 2 will include Poland!
(Famous last words...from our lips to G-d's earLOL)

History / Why are Poles/Poland disliked by Germans? [140]

You forgot Heidi Klumm:-)

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Can't disagree with ya there, Joker!

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Yo, gang!

Our friend Weimarer's up to his well-known provocateur tactics. His posts are only meant to engender shock value and little else:-)

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Spike31, be wary of such generalizations, and yet, there may well be something in what you've stated.
However, Duda's Holocaust-collaboration proviso with subsequent punishment from several years back, would have been UN-
THINKABLE in present-day Germany!

USA, Canada / The proper behavior an American should show when visiting Poland [159]

Aha! I see now.
Yes, you're probably right. People do normally look for the "exotic", ignoring the everyday around them.
I can only agree.

My apologies!

Language / RUDE word form conjugation + communicating on facebook in Polish [15]

Sure you don't mean Polish and pigeon English?
LOL

History / Why are Poles/Poland disliked by Germans? [140]

@Weimarer,
As you never responded to my post from yesterday late re: the current thread topoc, ck. out my private mail to you of just now apropos

something totally unrelated! You might even find it "amusing".
:-)

Language / What is your biggest problem with Polish language? [158]

Case-driven languages such as German and Polish can indeed make their intentions clear through inflection.
Sometimes though, a foreigner must think a bit before deciding on what a Polish sentence could mean, if only through word order, for example "Wielkim krajem sa Niemcy" (Germany's a big country) vs. "Niemcy sa wielkim krajem".

In English as well as German, there is no equivocation of meaning despite the variety grammatically possible given the Polish word order in both sentence. A 'literal' translation would sound strange indeed, cf. "A big country is Germany". rather than the more natural "Germany is a big country". No German either would say or write "Ein grosses Land ist Deutschland" without receiving some odd glances:-)

USA, Canada / The proper behavior an American should show when visiting Poland [159]

Untrue, Pawian!

America's greatest selling point is her sheer size. Give us a few millenia and we too can develop an "ancient" culture along with pride in a long past. We're only a few hundred years old, for pity's sake, and within that time, accomplished a heck of a lot, I think.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

It's simply the age-old blame game folks!
Germany claims Poland "stole" aka "purloined" (entwendet) the former's "original" lands or territories, Poland claims the Merkel Gov't. owes them compensation (resytucja/Wiedergutmachung) for lives and property lost because of German aggression during the Second World War. It's a lose-lose situation, it would appear, much as with Israel vs. the Palestinians, yet another case of pure "He said/She said.."

We're not even discussing the Jewish Question in former Nazi-occupied Europe here.

Genealogy / Second gen Polish-American with little exposure [45]

Racist??

Language / What is your biggest problem with Polish language? [158]

@Paulwiz,
Do you mean perchance "Geschlechtsartikel" for the English "gender articles"? While the absence of such might appear to simplify matters for a foreign learner aka a monolingual Anglophone trying to pick up an inflected language in adulthood, actually, gender is merely classification which selects from various categories and catalogues the world in terms of either biological vs. grammatical gender! English too had such markers, abandoned though with the onset of Middle English, thereafter all but disappearing.

Maybe because I grew up with German, learning Polish much later while almost thirty, the gender of a noun never seemed to cause me much concern. Once again, in terms of the biggest challenge of learning Polish, was for a long while deciding whether or not a verb was imperfective or perfective.

All else just fell into place.