News / "POLISH death camps" term used by "Parade Magazine" Anti-Polish Bigots [249]

Yet if Soviet citizens, including full-born Jews such as Kaganovitch, Sverdlov along with numerous other Politburo hacks, Isaac Babel in literature, Eisenstein in cinema etc. curried favor with Stalin implicitly, they certainly were free to live among their gentile fellow ethnic Russians, not fearing imprisonment in the gulags, if only to save their own skins along with those of their families!

Such was not the case in Hitler's Germany, where all full Jews, even those who sought naively to appease Hitler aka the Judenraete, were targets of imprisonment, later extermination, for the very fact of their being born Jewish.

This is a key distinction, often ignored in Revisionist or Revisionist-style debate.

News / "POLISH death camps" term used by "Parade Magazine" Anti-Polish Bigots [249]

"Elected" he surely was, yet scarcely democratically!
Much as in the American South at that time, Blacks technically could vote by that time, yet KKK pole watchers sure did their level best to intimidate any who tried.

We all know, you surely more than the rest of us outsiders, that the Weimar Constitution was a bleedin' joke,' a faltering house of cards built upon an equally shaky foundation and doomed to collapse at any moment.

News / "POLISH death camps" term used by "Parade Magazine" Anti-Polish Bigots [249]

@Ironside,

Historians though, both German as well as foreign, have argued for now nearly a century, as to whether or not the German nation in particular has proven herself more susceptible than certain others to blind obedience to despotic authority and anti-democratic acceptance of whatever those above dish out, simply because they wear the uniform of control.

We may never arrive at any conclusive discovery, yet the investigation remains intriguing.
Why, for instance, did societies such as Denmark, particularly Ireland, seem to eventually laugh off those weaklings who sought to sway others by systematic fear and terror?

A professor Leonard Krieger, in his famous volume "The German Idea of Freedom", came to the inescapable conclusion that the German's concept of liberty in the end was the freedom to be subjugated! The once well-known observation concerning the infamously failed "revolution" of 1848 (Vormaerz) was that if naturally had to fail; the police wouldn't allow it.

John Steinbeck's once famous quip still resonates, namely, that his worst nightmare was of being self-appointed dictator of Ireland for fear of being laughed to death:-)

Poland too never submitted to dictatorship, a point of considerable pride, I think. Instead, along with the French, boasted the largest single anti-Faschist resistance movement in Europe.

News / "POLISH death camps" term used by "Parade Magazine" Anti-Polish Bigots [249]

Sorry there, Milo! Maf's got you that time:-)

News / "POLISH death camps" term used by "Parade Magazine" Anti-Polish Bigots [249]

Once and for all, leave us refute this particular slander and be clear: They were GERMAN death camps, on Polish occupied soil!! Period. It was the Nazis who were the progenitors of mass depopulation through racial "purification", not the Poles.

Love / Are the Polish the most suspicious people in Europe? [73]

Granted, pawian.

However, neither in an exclusively French, German nor Swedish bookseller, first time customer as well, did I ever encounter the
degree of undisguised suspicion which I did in Greenpoint.

Furthermore, in the former three language bookshops, the owner/manager knew immediately that I was neither a native Frenchman,
German nor Swede, yet with never the slightest inkling of wariness which I can recall:-)

Love / Are the Polish the most suspicious people in Europe? [73]

Suspicion of outsiders, in my experience, is most common among tightly homogeneous communities, scarcely limited to the Poles:-)

An incident which happened to me, oh about fifteen odd years ago, was in a Polish bookstore I happened to be visiting in Greenpoint.

I'd been going to specialty foreign language bookshops for years, for various languages, German, French, Swedish in the New York area, but at this particular book dealer (my first time there), the store owner greeted me, in Polish, and I returned the greeting. The gentleman asked if I was looking for something in particular, at which point I responded that I was simply browsing.

It then occurred to me that, although there were other customers in the store, he began to follow me about, as though checking up on me to make certain I wasn't going to steal something. He then called a co-worker on the store phone, and asked them to please come down to the showroom as there was a customer browsing among the books.

Politely of course, I reiterated in Polish that I was merely looking around. Finally, I did in fact make a purchase of a rather expensive dictionary 'Slownik Polszczyzny' (PFN) and bid the owner farewell.

Even though well-attired that day and clearly able to pay for my purchase, the man remained constantly suspicious of my presence in his shop.

Love / Are the Polish the most suspicious people in Europe? [73]

Possibly among the older generation in particular, years of Communist snitching and surveillance left permanent scar tissue on the society
as a whole, much as in the former GDR, creating a degree of extreme wariness, often absent from Western culture.

That's my guess at any rate.

Life / Poles speaking English - examples [263]

That's one of the gaffs to which I was referring, Pawian!

Life / Poles speaking English - examples [263]

The English "to yearn for" in Polish is "tesknic za", which is no doubt what Carter was trying to convey, I believe, when he expressed the common desires of Americans and Poles, "yearning for" freedom:-)

Perhaps I'm wrong.

Genealogy / What are common Polish character traits? [425]

It's not fancy, it's merely Yiddish-influenced English, as Maf said!

Genealogy / What are common Polish character traits? [425]

True, Maf!

Plenty of gentiles also used to say for instance, "So make like a nice guy and leave me alone..." or expressions of that sort.

Genealogy / What are common Polish character traits? [425]

"Know FROM" is acceptably correct US usage! What you Europeans learn
in British English, I wouldn't have a clue:-)

Life / Poles speaking English - examples [263]

Right, Maf!

Seymour was in fact originally a Russian/Ukrainian to English interpreter who was called in at the last minute to sub for the regular Polish interpreter.

As an interpreter and translator myself, I particularly remember the incident while studying the process of related language interference in college at the time:-)

Life / Poles speaking English - examples [263]

So do I, then again, I'm not a Polish native speaker. Neither was Mr. Seymour, apparently!

Genealogy / What are common Polish character traits? [425]

Well, here in the US, we know only from "deadbeat dads", never moms!
:-)

Life / Poles speaking English - examples [263]

Should also be a thread about Americans speaking Polish. The story of President Carter's interpreter naturally back in around '77 comes to mind, when the poor fella translated Carter's words literally, "I wish to reach out to the people of Poland...", coming out on the other end as "I lust after the Polish people.....".

The chap's name was David Seymour, as I recall, from NYU, and believe you me, that time Polish President Gierek was not amused by the gaff!

Genealogy / What are common Polish character traits? [425]

My first Polish primer was called "PRACOWITA MATKA", from around the late sixties or so. Here, the units and readings stressed the tough, self-reliant, yet diligent Polish mother, always hard at work for her family, and of course, the State!

Genealogy / What are common Polish character traits? [425]

True. The Poles, particularly under Communism, had a reputation as workers, not shirkers!
Many a time I can recall during a period not all that long ago, when many of the local cleaning women were typically older Poles, that they were known to be exceptionally clean and with their nose to the grindstone.

Language / Game - guess Polish idioms/sayings in direct English translation [1756]

Just remembered one of the first idioms, idiomatic sayings, I ever learned: MADRY POLAK PO SZKODZIE = ONE'S ALWAYS
WISER AFTER THE FACT, or something to that effect:-)

Life / Polish Nursery Rhymes [253]

Fair enough, pawian.

Life / Polish Nursery Rhymes [253]

In the Masur, if I'm not mistaken, is near to where "Noz w wodzie" was filmed.

Life / Polish Nursery Rhymes [253]

No, byles harcierzem tez, pawian?
:-)
stick to the English, please

Life / Polish Nursery Rhymes [253]

I seem to remember a particular verse, and thought for a long while that it was some type of
children's verse:

"Lato, lato, lato czeka...."

Always knew it was a summer song, but it reminded me of something that moms might
sing to their kids on the first day of summer, a fun picknick, family time, or something of the like.
:-)

Genealogy / KUKULA ancestry [32]

More Hungarian originally, I'd guess.

History / Occupation of Eastern Poland in 1939 [98]

Thanks for that, TheOther! I could always use a good laughLOL

History / Occupation of Eastern Poland in 1939 [98]

Just look at the way in which East German textbooks taught (or didn't teach) the Holocaust!

Unless it has changed, I've read and have spoken with former East Germans, who reported that any mention of the
Jews as victims of Nazi genocide was nearly whitewashed, instead hailing those murdered Jews as "heroes of the
East German State who died as good Communists fighting the Faschist foe."

Not exactly the way it happened there, kids:-)

History / What do Poles owe to Germans? [451]

Sure. The Commies got duped twice, once by their own leaders, the second time by the new regime!
Either way, they got screwed big time. Obvious? It's as plain as the nose on your face.

History / What do Poles owe to Germans? [451]

'Course not.

It's stuff like this that gives coups a bad name!

History / What do Poles owe to Germans? [451]

Whom else would you quote, pawian?

Look, can't see what the big mystery is. I steal your wallet and then YOU are expected to compensate ME for YOUR theft??!
Think man!

Typo.
"I steal you wallet and then YOU'RE expected to compensate me for MY theft?"