History / Not proud of my Polish heritage [110]

Bogznami,

The scientific contributions of Polish-born mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers are legion! Without Kopernikus, we'd still believe the sun revolves around the earth, with Lobaczewski, differential calculus received a boost, and without Manya Sklodowska aka Mme. Marie Curie, we'd perhaps know less about the effects of

radiation, much the same way as Dr. Kazimir Funk gave the first introduction in modern medicine to the power of vitamins.

Multiply every German Kepler, Leibniz, Gauss, Roentgen or Einstein by the contemporaneous accomplishments of the Poles, and one would find no less in the latter category.

Poland has simply been a victim of horrendous public relations over the past centuries and it's certainly high time to set things right on that score!

History / Not proud of my Polish heritage [110]

Bogznami,

Be proud of your heritage, what ever its stripe! Thank heavens you have one:-)

News / Poland in the European Union. Polexit? [559]

I also learned the same thing in school, only at that time during the late 1970's, that quote was attributed to Jakob Burkhardt, the famed Swiss historian.

Who knows, perhaps he purloined it from Voltaire:-)

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1050]

Polish, like German and other inflected European languages, is ever so precise, albeit far from "logical"!
I stopped trying to find or translate the "logic" of other languages umpteen years back, as I saw I wouldn't
get anywhere, and so merely began to accept their vaguries and simply chalked it all up to cultural difference:-)

An unusually nuanced language, Polish, I find.

News / Poland's Future in the EU under PIS [51]

Poland seems to be drifting further and further away from the gravitational pull of Europeandom.
I pray she finds the wisdom to withstand the anti-Constitutionality of Messrs. Duda and Kaczynski to return to the European fold!

Life / Polish movies with English subtitles [87]

Try Polish movies with POLISH subtitles and watch how your Polish skyrockets.

UK, Ireland / Why are Polish people, especially women, so disrespectful toward the English? [442]

Always found it interesting from my perspective here in the States, how soooo many Poles living in areas such as Greenpoint, Bklyn, speak no English, work off the books (because they're here illegally), live as subtenants (again, ILLEGALLY), miraculously all carry US passports:-) I know of at least two, friends of a Polish acquaintance of my wife and myself, who indeed flaunt them in front of strangers.

Makes one wonder, doesn't it!

News / Mister President Andrzej Duda - Best Poland could get. [96]

...add, a true hero who was sharply in tune with suffering, as he'd been through ever so much himself! Even Meghan, his daughter, confessed in her beautiful eulogy that her father wasn't perfect. To paraphrase Churchill's rhetorical question about democracy, "Have we got anyone better?"

News / Mister President Andrzej Duda - Best Poland could get. [96]

Trump sees himself as a maverick. A maverick "what" is my question!
At least Duda appears to be trying to do something for his own, NOT putting foreigners at the front of the line.
While I'm scarcely defending the PiS party in any shape or form, Trump got elected on a platform of "America First".
Although he talks a good game as far as his ignorant electorate are concerned, don't please sit there and tell me that
he ONLY hires American workers on his construction sites, 'cuz that's just a flat out lie.

News / Mister President Andrzej Duda - Best Poland could get. [96]

Duda seems to be plotting his own individual course, and steadfastly refuses to part from it.
He's decided despite his critics to go the road alone!

Sounds rather like Trump:-) Difference is that at least Duda behaves in a more conventionally presidential fashion, unmired completely by the burden
of the late 1960's with its cheap vulgarity and dead-head drug culture.

UK, Ireland / Why are Polish people, especially women, so disrespectful toward the English? [442]

Bravo, Atch!

UK, Ireland / Why are Polish people, especially women, so disrespectful toward the English? [442]

Ditto, Johnny!

Only you seem better "connected" than I am, thus allowed to spew your filth across cyber space with impunity.

UK, Ireland / Why are Polish people, especially women, so disrespectful toward the English? [442]

If you weren't clueless yourself, Johnny, you would need to constantly remark on how clueless others are, as though you and yours have some sort of monopoly on the truth!! It's all the way we see it, right?

As the Bard once said (and it still hold true today), "Methinks thou protesteth too much!"
:-)

UK, Ireland / Why are Polish people, especially women, so disrespectful toward the English? [442]

One needn't have witnessed atrocity first hand to know how horrific it must have been:-)

UK, Ireland / Why are Polish people, especially women, so disrespectful toward the English? [442]

Bad things happen in peacetime too, buddy! My point being that what occurred during the lean Black Market years throughout much of Eastern Europe was nothing to be proud of, it cannot, indeed should not, be whitewashed either!

The US troops were on the whole a valiant bunch, yet as with the Jews who wound up in concentration camp and later turned kapo, there will always be plenty of rotten apples in the bunch to go around.

UK, Ireland / Why are Polish people, especially women, so disrespectful toward the English? [442]

I know Poles for years, directly from Poland, right here in the US! A Pole conversely can comment on what's going on the the UK based upon

relevant conversations with Poles as well as Brits who presently live there, even if a person hasn't physically been back to the country in many years.

One has relations, e-mails, phone conversations, newspapers etc..

Concerning my remarks about women having to prostitute themselves in those places I mentioned, one also must face such facts however unpleasant!
Think it's easy for me to fess up to the abuses among scores of US servicemen in Germany after the war who gang raped German women??

Yet it happened, and I as an American (forget about as a Jew) simply must accept it, difficult, indeed shameful, as it may well be to shed the image of G.I.'s as some sort of conquering heroes.

UK, Ireland / Why are Polish people, especially women, so disrespectful toward the English? [442]

I know from the first-hand knowledge and experiences of those whom I spoke with about such things! Sure, people aren't going to come up to you and say, "Yo, I was a slut for the KGB!" or something of this nature, but it was known to have occurred.

Because something is unpleasant doesn't mean it should be put on someone else's lap, dolno.

UK, Ireland / Why are Polish people, especially women, so disrespectful toward the English? [442]

One, even several select personal experiences such as yours, dolno, scarcely qualify to exclude the general masses of people who suffered greatly under the Black Market years!

UK, Ireland / Why are Polish people, especially women, so disrespectful toward the English? [442]

Poles, Czechs, Romanians, and particularly the Russians themselves, suffered dreadfully under Communism, forcing women in particular to "grow up", shall we say, faster than in most other countries, not to mention those outside of the former Eastern Block!

Young women, even teens, among the above three nationalities were often forced to sell themselves into prostitution merely to stay alive, selling their bodies in exchange for food as well as basic supplies. It was a tough grind in those years and so, although guaranteed work and a place to live, life was horrible under Stalin's post-War minions. The latter undoubtedly left its imprint on the peoples personalities, especially the female population, made to appear cockier, older, and infinitely more self-assured than most men.

Hungary's "Goulash Communism" was more Western, therefore not really comparable with Poland, erstwhile Czechoslovakia, Romania or the one-time Soviet Union.

Travel / Why do you visit Poland? [223]

Zakopane's considered a must see, but can be a wee bit pricey, I'd wager:-)
Although I've never been, I've been told it is well worth a visit!

Real Estate / Where to look on the internet for Poland Real Estate [114]

Similar expression in Dutch "onroerend goed", lit. "non-movable goods".
Just an aside, not directly related to topic thread:-)

Life / Things that annoy you in Poland. [133]

Poland and the Poles surely have been through the ringer as few other European nationalites, that's for certain! Even the Italians can fall back on the Renaissance if ever the "M****" is hurled at the them. The Germans are able to summon forth centuries of supreme, indeed often superior, achievement in nearly every facet of human accomplishment as soon as the word "Nazi" invariably comes up.. The Russians boast the largest single land mass on earth, unusually rich in natural resources...

Poland has had to fight in order to be taken seriously, and I dare say, still is.

Genealogy / Displaced Persons Camp / Work camp and concentration camp difference [86]

In order to qualify for citizenship today in the Federal Republic, official (written) proof must be furnished that BOTH parents were/are German nationals.
Several years ago, I asked a young man whose parents were from Spain, but who was born in Frankfurt (and who spoke only German, no Spanish!), whether he had to apply for German citizenship or whether it was granted automatically as it would be, for instance, here in the States. He replied that technically, he was not a German citizen because his mother and father were guest workers in Germany and therefore never became German citizens; he was still considered a Spanish national!

Perhaps not applicable in Bugaj'daughter's case owing to questions of statehood vs. statelessness, but it might be worth looking into.

Genealogy / Displaced Persons Camp / Work camp and concentration camp difference [86]

I know an older Jewish woman, easily in her late sixties, early-seventies by this time, who was born in Celle, Germany not far from Lueneburg in the North and grew up until the age of five or so in a Displaced Persons Camp (Sammellager fuer Fluechtlinge). She then came to the States, speaks no German whatsoever, and talks like a native New Yorker.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

While we're mentioning patriotic song, you forgot the most iconic battle "hymn" of the Jewish Resistance throughout Poland: 'Zog nit keynmol dos du gehst de letzte weg' (Never say that this road ends for you)!

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

How, Joker?? By speaking mostly only in Arabic rather than learning German, lazier still, expecting that they can communicate with locals in their broken English?!

Come on, the Syrian migrants are surely not all "bad" people, they are becoming a drain though socially on German society, I don't care one hoot what Ms. Merkel says.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

We see the latter every day as part of our embarrassing national statistic...if you bother to read the Times:-)
Most news journals don't even bother to print the truth any longer for fear of being labled "fake news" by our
Idiot-in-Chief!

The Reagan Era scarcely "killed people off" in the manner of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot or certain others of that ilk. As I said, the Anglo-Saxon way

is the more sinister, because the more sereptitious. Unlike the former three, it promises freedom: the freedom to starve on your own time, to go

hungry at will, to die off due to the distinterest of our government which won the Cold War, but lost the social peace. No more Cold War, no more need

to keep our people happy, since nobody's about to defect to Russia as in former times pre-'89.

The Cold War's over, is that great?

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

This is the sad reality, true.

However, had the underpinnings of Christianity been as firmly in place as they should have, it would not have been necessary to desire
the eventual extermination of said Jews, despite the failures of many to assimilate!

And herein lies the crucial difference between the US and much of Europe; in the United States, we may not shoot you at sunrise and pile innumerable corpses one atop the other, tossing them into incinerators. We simply harrass people to death, depriving the deserving of medical attention etc.. Death by attrition rather than by firing squad. Neither a terribly nice option, and one which CAN be avoided.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Jews however, in particular German-speaking Jews, DID in point of fact desire a European homeland, above all, Germany!
One has only to read the rapturous peons to Germany written by the likes of the convert Heinrich Heine, not to mention, Rabbi Dr Leo Baeck,

leader of Germany's Jewish community before WWII:-)

They all desired nothing better than assimilation into the German culture. Hitler had different ideas.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Thank you, Dirk!

We're finally back on the same home page. The only difference between nowadays vs. "the old days" is that today people hint at it more than back in former times.

Sixty or more years ago, it was commonly understood that the family priest/rabbi, the local minister to a loyal, contributing congregant of many years, a politician etc. was nearly always THE intermediary who brokered jobs for those who paid into the system.