News / Pro-Israel lobby to be formed in Polish parliament [29]

On May 13th the Vatican recognized the state of Palestine. Good for Roman-Catholicism and bad for the racist Zionist scum that think they can dispossess the Palestinian people and keep them stateless. Polish Christians are overwhelmingly Roman-Catholic. Recognizing the human rights of Palestinians is the Christian thing to do. Supporting the racist state of Israel is wrong.

History / Good enough for British - Joseph Conrad? Poland-born novelist. [30]


Conrad's British publisher tried to convince him not to give the novella that title, but he refused to change it. However, in the United States, his publisher refused to use that title, and thus the novella was initially published under a completely different one. Although this was long before the term "politically correct" even existed.

Conrad meant no offense by using the "N-word" in the title. One of Conrad's dear friends from his sailing days was a black man, who continued to visit Conrad and his family after Joseph had become a professional writer, and that is how they referred to him. Conrad seems to have been unaware of the infamy of the word in the United States.

History / Sarmatism in Poland [119]

The title of this merged thread, Turks says that Sarmatism wasn`t Polish but Turkish thing, misrepresents the content of the article it references.


muftah.org/islams-long-lasting-influence-polish-culture/#.VUjsfpNs1-w

There is absolutely nothing controversial in acknowledging oriental influences on the martial, sartorial, and culinary fashions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth because they are obvious. The reasons that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth orientalized parts of her culture are numerous. Some of these reasons were pragmatic I.E. Turkish, Tartar and Magyar influenced cavalry tactics won battles, but many cultural appropriations were done out of aesthetic concerns. There is an interesting story behind the adoption of these aesthetic concerns.

Tacitus' Germania, lost since late antiquity and discovered in Hersfeld Abbey in 1425, ascribes the rule of the area, that would later comprise the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, to the Sarmatians. The szlachta wholeheartedly took up the Sarmatian label for themselves. They conjectured that their ancestors must have come from the East, conquered the area, and subsequently adopted the Slavic and Baltic languages of their subjects. They had the example of the Slavic speaking, but originally Turkic, Bulgars for the plausibility of this belief. The szlachta mistakenly believed that the Sarmatians were a Turkic people (they were actually Iranic) and so they began adopting some Turkish styles to celebrate their supposed heredity. Sarmatism allowed the diverse szlachta to believe in a distant common origin for themselves, and to create a style of living unifying them in the present.

Despite, the possibly misleading, title of the article, Islam's Long Lasting Influence Polish Culture, this style had very little to do with the religious precepts of Islam and a lot to do with the aesthetics of certain oriental peoples who had adopted Islam. Another originally oriental people, the Magyars, had at least as much influence on Sarmatism as the Turks and Tartars. The szlachta saw the Hungarian nobility as their closest peers because they had embraced Christianity like themselves.

History / Terrible past for the Jews in Poland? [930]

Hey, TheOther, why don't you post on the topic of the thread? Is making stupid claims about "usual suspects" and extending your friendship to condescending Germans really more important?

Hey, Jolly, I asked you if you are ashamed to be hijacking a thread about Polish Jews to make it about ethnic Germans. I ask because Germans murdered three million Polish Jews during WW2. Do you not see how the reader may find this shameful? As for the AK. They fought to liberate Poland from the very same Germans that murdered all those Jews. I am proud of the AK.

History / Terrible past for the Jews in Poland? [930]


Can you explain this claim? Are you in the least bit ashamed to be complaining about the plight of ethnic Germans in a thread asking about the terrible past for Jews in Poland?

History / Terrible past for the Jews in Poland? [930]

How many "guts" does it take to be a German, whose government perpetrated the worst genocide in the history of mankind, to lecture Poles on not being culpable enough?

History / Terrible past for the Jews in Poland? [930]

Harry now claims he mentioned the Madagascar Plan in conjunction with the Final Solution in order to contrast their vast difference! What an asinine attempt to backpedal! Harry, are you taking lessons from Netanyahu?

History / Terrible past for the Jews in Poland? [930]

Here, again, is the post in which Harry implicates Poles in the creation of the Final Solution:


What do you think reader? Am I right? If not, then why does Harry mention the "Madagascar plan" in conjunction with the "final Solution" and why would a plan that was merely investigated, and not implemented, be "by no means the least" part of a terrible past for the Jews in Poland?

History / Terrible past for the Jews in Poland? [930]

Harry, I have already quoted the post in which you stupidly use a slippery slope fallacy to implicate Poles in the creation of the "Final Solution". The reader can see this above. Acting like a petulant baby about it won't get you out of the disgusting hole you have dug for yourself. Lie in the mud.

History / Terrible past for the Jews in Poland? [930]

Harry, when you use a slippery-slope fallacy to blame Poles for the Holocaust it is blood libel. You brought it up and you should be ashamed of yourself. You have done this in the service of your fetish, the Holocaust. Holocaust fetishism exists and your disgusting post is a clear example of it.

History / Terrible past for the Jews in Poland? [930]


It is enough to say that using the slippery-slope fallacy to blood libel Poles is a particularly disgusting example of Holocaust fetishism.

Genealogy / How Polish am I? What is the correct formula? [58]


Ethnicities are branches of the human family tree and everyone's descent goes back to a time before current ethnicities existed, but that doesn't makes the term "Polish" meaningless for a person coming on to this forum with a Polish great-grandmother.


Ethnicity in the genetic sense is never "lost" as long as the bearers of the genes continue to reproduce. Mixing doesn't negate ethnicities just as marriage doesn't negate families. I fear you are trying to understand ethnicity with some sort of creepy fixation on "purity". Are you of German descent? Maybe it is in your blood......


Why do you think that one cannot be both a Polish-American as well as an African-American? Why must a line be drawn? If lines are necessary then of course they are drawn nearer one's immediate descent just as is done with terms like "immediate family" and "distant cousin".


Bloodlines are not "invisible" nor are cultural ties. People of Polish descent have ancestors that participated in the Polish experience and thus being interested in Polish history and culture is a completely reasonable thing for people of Polish descent.


People in the USA define themselves in myriad ways. For most of them their ethnicity is just one aspect of who they are. Pretending that one's ethnicity, such as "Polish-American", is somehow the be all and end all of one's self-identity is a severe misunderstanding of the role played by ethnicity in America and elsewhere.


You set up false dichotomies, build straw men, and goosestep.

Genealogy / How Polish am I? What is the correct formula? [58]


An new poster with family living in Poland chooses to refer to their abode as a "homestead" and this it the obnoxiousness she is subjected to. That really is too bad.


You are 1/8th Polish.


You are right.


Ethnic Poles today are descended from ethnic Poles of previous generations. They have their genetics in common and anyone who has ever witnessed family resemblances knows that this is not nothing. What makes you want to believe that large branches the human family tree cannot be described in terms of ethnicity? You are aware that we all ultimately trace our roots back to Africa:


I hope she is too and I also hope that she is proud of her Polish heritage. Her great-grandmother was Polish and her exponentially great-grandmother was African. There is nothing wrong with being proud of one's family.

The members of the Polish diaspora that come to this forum are often quite surprised to be met by this weird gauntlet of people telling them Polish descent is a myth. It isn't.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1080]


Please understand that "Central Europe" is not a term that is used much in the USA. In accordance with simple binary thinking, Americans divide Europe into East and West. In the USA itself the "Mid-West" is on the Eastern side of the center of the country and "Central-America" is an isthmus far to the South. You really shouldn't believe that Americans are somehow stereotyping Poles as barbaric or impoverished when they call Poland Eastern-European. I understand the inveterate Polish desire not to be lumped in with autocracies like Russia and Belorussia, but you shouldn't assume that Americans see "Eastern" European culture as a monolith even if they are using one term to refer to it geographically. They haven't been educated to discern a distinctly "Central" part of Europe as you have.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1080]


The combined population of Rumania, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia is around 36 million. There are estimates that place the total number of Slavs in the world at 350 million people, but that includes Southern-European Slavs and Russians East of the Urals. I wonder what percentage of "Eastern-Europe" is Slavic if one includes the Wends, Czechs, Slovaks and Poles as Eastern-Europeans.



Poland's wealth relative to countries farther West is not the reason many consider Poland part of an "Eastern-Europe". It is the fact that Poles are Slavs and they speak a Satem tongue which speakers of Romance and Germanic languages find exotic.

You really shouldn't have a chip on your shoulders about this. "Eastern-European" is not a derogatory term.

History / Origins of Polish Slavs [138]

Here is Jordanes' text in English translation:


harbornet.com/folks/theedrich/Goths/Goths1.htm


Very true, Herodotus writing in the Fifth Century BC mentions several peoples in the area (including a race of seasonal werewolves) and Tacitus wrote of the Venedi at the end of the First Century, but the text above from 550 AD is the oldest one to use the name Sclaweni.


The names of Polish rivers meaning nothing in Slavic languages is not irrelevant, even if they are of Indo-European origin. Names from different branches of the Indo-European language family would be consistent with the widely accepted theory that posits Indo-Europeans migrating in waves, with the Slavs being the last wave.


One may say this, but although Poland has been proposed as the Proto-Indo-European Urheimat, the most popular candidate for this place is the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Others argue forcefully for Anatolia.

History / Origins of Polish Slavs [138]


If the Polish Slavs are the autochthonic population of Poland then they did indeed arrive as hunter-gatherers many thousands of years ago, but if Slavs had been in Central Europe all along then why are they not mentioned in any written sources until 550 AD? The more widely accepted theory is that Slavs migrated into the area not as hunter-gatherers but as horticulturalists and herders during the Fifth Century.

Life / Anyone like the Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski? [5]

I like Becksinski, inasmuch as anyone can like supremely eerie depictions of a dessicated dead world. Are his paintings visual metaphors for a morally decrepit society, or has he actually painted the aftermath of the coming nuclear apocalypse, or both?

Such contemplation may leave one in need of a laugh. Here are images, contributed to a Chicago based satirical website, that utilize some of Beksinski's most famous compositions to parody a strange Polish advertisement:

somethingawful.com/photoshop-phriday/invest-eastern-poland/2/

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Language / August - What does it mean as a word definition given by Google Translate? [13]

why don't you post the Google translation of the sentence?

Language / August - What does it mean as a word definition given by Google Translate? [13]

August means distinguished

Genealogy / Do I look Polish? (my picture) [375]


Going to Ellis Island would probably be pointless because her OP states that her family is from Baltimore:


A lot of the Polish immigrants coming to the USA, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, had the port city of Baltimore, and not Ellis Island, as their landing point. All of my paternal great-grandparents arrived in the USA via Baltimore. Much of this Polish immigration through Baltimore was "illegal" and so there is no government record of the processing and admission of these immigrants.

News / Don't let Poland become like my country, France. [630]


Christ is a name from the Greek language. There may well have been a real person named Jesus who considered himself a Jew, but the Christ of Christianity is God made flesh, and that is anathema to Judaism. If Jesus believed what Christians believe about him then he was not a Jew.


Mormonism accepts almost all of the tenets of Christianity (save for the Virgin Birth) and just adds another narrative about Christ visiting the New World. Judaism rejects Christianity's central tenet. Christianity is not Judaic in the same sense as Mormonism is Christian.

News / Don't let Poland become like my country, France. [630]

Claiming that there is a Judeo-Christian "tradition" is very misleading. The tenets of Judaism and Christianity are incompatible. Judaism rejects the central tenet of Christianity. The Christian belief, that God became manifest as a man on earth, is heresy for Jews. Judaism insists on an absolutely pneumatic God. This Jewish rejection of the divinity of Christ is heresy for Christians, and Christianity for the vast majority of its existence has considered the Jews guilty of the crime of Deicide. What kind of "tradition" is that? It isn't one by any stretch of the imagination.

Claiming that the "Judeo-Christian tradition" is a "fact" is as absurd as claiming that there is something called the "Hindu-Buddhist tradition" which is a "fact". Newer religions that radically break with the traditional beliefs of older religions cannot rightly be claimed to be continuations of these traditions. Claiming that the pneumatic God was made flesh, or denying the authority of the Vedas, are such radical breaks.

News / Don't let Poland become like my country, France. [630]


Zoroastrians are not called "people of the book" by Muslims. The book being referred to in that appellation is the Bible and not the Zend-Avesta.

History / Differences between Poland and Russia [43]


I went to public high school in Southern California and the partitions of Poland were included in the history curriculum.


Are you really sure that you know this for a "fact"?


Polish-Americans live throughout the United States. It isn't just in places wherein they are highly concentrated that Poland is mentioned in history courses. It isn't always lobbying by an ethnic group that gets its ancestral homeland's history included in curricula, and it most certainly isn't the case with respect to Polish history. The partitions of Poland are included in history courses in the USA because they are such blatant cases of the greed and immorality of autocracies. The republic of the United States uses the actions of Prussia, Austro-Hungary, and Russia as negative examples when educating her citizenry.

History / Differences between Poland and Russia [43]


The partitions of Poland are mentioned in high school history classes in the United States and the textbooks used often include a famous political cartoon, of the time, depicting three fat and ugly caricatures of the partitioning powers.

Life / Halloween vs All Saints' Day in Poland [48]

Halloween is only superficially about shallow consumerism. The deeper meaning of the holiday is about acknowledging the reality of death. Children face their fears on Halloween, engage in adventurous pranks and gorge themselves on the candies that they so enjoy, but Halloween is even more fun for their elders. Adults indulge their passions for creativity, and satire, in the clever costuming that they devise for themselves, and at the house parties and nightclubs they attend a delicious atmosphere humor, and eroticism prevails. Halloween is a celebration of joy and sex in the face of death and it is grand!

USA, Canada / Why do Americans (and Canadians) hate Polish people? [226]


This is a cogent observation. The people that tease Polonians in this way are almost invariably stupid themselves. Upon learning that their interlocutor is of Polish descent, it isn't hatred that drives most of them to say something asinine, it is a sense of relief on their parts and a feeling of solidarity. Think of the scene in the film "Freaks" when the carnival workers chant "One of us!"


In the latter case one proverbial Polonian option is to wear brown shoes, so you won't have noticeable stains upon them after kicking an offender's ass.

History / Poles and Russians -- love-hate relationship? [209]


Thank you for the poem Natasa.
Alas Slavophilia is in short supply here. People are free to calls Slavs racist but if anyone dares to say the same about a Western-European poster then they are threatened with suspension. The double standards of Orientalism are sadly present here.

History / Poles and Russians -- love-hate relationship? [209]

Hey Natasa! It is good to see you again. This forum needs Slavic intellectuals. It is too dominated by uneducated British racists.