Why Do You Love Poland?

This is a quote from my book I wrote with the US and the Americans in mind.



The above applies to any country. Poland included.

Wow - cant wait to read the rest of your book. How many pages of this insight are there ?

Just one. You just read it.

I don't love Poland. Love, like anything good, needs to be earned.

I love the Polish landscape though. If its the geographical country, yes of course. I love it.

If its the Poland (and means its people) then I regret its condition.

I can "love" what can love back. Not a requirement but a possibility. A lake will not love you.

Even when we "love" people, "love" used too often loses its weight and rank.

A beautiful garden can give love back my refreshing your senses. I tree with shade, and a lake with fresh water and its relaxing colour and flow. Not only to the senses, but also through other scientific ways to support a liveable and sustainable planet.


This I agree. Thats why, when it comes to people, love is not so cheap.

I am serious about my love. I loved my mother because she took me even after 2 other children she had and she kept in contact with me even when I left Poland with a man who she misunderstood at first. Later she was fond of him. I loved her and hated her for how many problems she let come my way when I tried to leave.

I don't love my father, I don't love the Poles I came across growing up. I have only 2 close friends in Poland and ironically both are in Canada and I am in New Zealand.

I like your posts so treat my responses as friendly.

"Love", in my opinion, occupies the top position on the scale of human emotions. Hate is at the other end, obviously.

In the US, by the frequency and context, we abused that word to the point that it's as meaningless as "hello" or "hi".

So here is an updated version of my super brilliant comment: I can "love" what I can hug and what can hug me back.

This clearly eliminated trees.

I treat everyone friendly :) ... but I can sting when I need to ;)


What about hugging a dead pet? A lover in coma? :) ... It is arguable for me. Lets agree to disagree.

I think I can hug a tree and the tree might be hugging me back in its own way ~ only difference is that I cannot tell as I'm still at a point in time where that knowledge has not yet be revealed.

My mother and I had bad terms all her life, but we still talked and I cried when she died. So much that after so many years I browsed all the pictures of my home in Poland and went through all the pictures of my mother. I will never forget the bad times, but I knew we wouldn't be hugging each other when I thought of my mom. It was still a bond.

I love the tree at our local park across the street. I feel its a member of our friend circle :), even family, and so does our dog :D.

I love the rivers :) ... do you know the clear and pure waters of New Zealand? I love this country.

I love so many things ...

But then there are those specialise LOVEs... like the love I have to my husband, my children ... that is special! I can move anywhere for them. Thank goodness no one needs to :)

A warning: tree hugger is an insult here.

Your honesty is amazing. I am talking about this sentence: My mother and I had bad terms all her life, but we still talked and I cried when she died.

I was surprised that you would actually admit this here. I am not criticizing, just surprised.

I have seen my parents, myself, and my daughters as parents and the progress has been amazing. I could never compete with my kids as parents. My parents would get a C or 3 on the Polish scale. I would be B, barely.

Their preoccupation with themselves had a positive side, though. I learned to be independent and there were no tears on anybody when I was leaving.

Greek has I believe 7 different words for 'love' i.e. brotherly love, sexual love, love for an animal, etc.

To Islamists its all same "love" :P

A quote from Gen'l. Patton as portrayed by George C. Scott:

"Nobody ever won a war by dying for his country. The only way to win a war is by making the OTHER son of a ***** die for HIS country!!"

See, Anglos are wise. They erected few monuments to Poles in Britain. Just in case. To keep Poles properly oriented.

My all-time favorite quote.

Which brings me back to "love". I am ready to put my life on the line to protect the 7 persons I love. I will never do this for a lake or a tree.

But there are some people who will :)

You can call them crazy, but that don't change anything. It just depends on what people see worthy of the ultimate love. Its love when its not completely logical and goes beyond everything we comprehend about some of its aspects at least.

This why I don't love Poland.

The stupidy of that temper tantrum known as the Warsaw Uprising is breathtaking. It destroyed the city and killed 200,000 Poles. It almost killed me as I was in Warsaw during the whole bloody thing.

After the war, the Polish Soviet collaborators cheerfully helped the new occupiers. No, they were not reluctant.

Anyone who claims to love Polish language, the grammar and the sound, is lying or is a masochist. I started hating it after listening to the Voice of America. Until then, I would tend to studder slightly. In English - never. It flows so naturally. And the 26 letters. Who and why needs three versions of "a" and "z"?

Food is worse than awful. Fattening and unedible if not served sizzling.

Emotion always trumps logic and facts in the Polish way of thinking. Try to discuss rationally and without that Polish passion the September 1939 resistance, the horses vs tanks, and the Warsaw Uprising and you will quickly know what I mean. Dying for the country is the highest mission and honor. No, thanks.

Today, Warsaw looks like somebody threw it together and forgot that things should be in harmony. Palac Kultury, as ugly as it is, is drowned out by those super modern abominations.

And then there is this mindless graffiti. Everywhere. And the locals love it enough for it to stay. If they hated it, it would be painted over and the "artists" would be serving time long enough to drive the message home.

Rich, what you've just described might describe half-a-dozen such megalopoli anywhere in the world, much less Europe! Is that honestly a reason NOT to love Poland, for that matter, any country?

Although only briefly (a day or so at the outset) in a medium to large Polish city, I found most German cities I visited, as well as lived in for a while, considerably more "bad-tempered" than any experience I had in Szczecin. Grafitti?? Name us a metropolis anywhere today not infected by it!

How can a person not enjoy hearty, healthy Polish cuisine with farm-fresh ingredients? Sure beats American TV dinners any day of the month.

Think you're being meretricious here, to speak frankly.

If they are all the same, neither one deserves more "love".

Notice that I mentioned graffiti last.

There is a very short step from "you should love your country" to "you should be ready to die for your country". That's what the demagogues peddle while they and their families will happily be as far as possible from the danger zone. Remember Kuwait? While our guys where there, they were in Paris.

Patriotism is for the other guy, said Patton. I just made it up but it's close.

Don't get me wrong, but you sound really stupid. You have never heard about 150 k Polish soldiers :"zolnierze wykleci" who died in combat fighting against mostly Jewish and Russian communists brought into Warsaw by the Soviet army??

Stupid temper tantrum seriously? Those people were fighting invaders who killed their family and friends and pillaged the country. They fought and died for freedom and independence. If the warsaw uprising was a temper tantrum than so were the many battles of the American revolutionary war which also lead to around 100k per side and destruction of a bunch of cities and towns.


That was mainly surviving jews, other minorities and a few polish commies supporting the red army and stalin. The vast majority of poles supported the AK and government in exile. The commies were able to manipulate the elections seeing as the red army was occupying the capital. And poles fought and resisted the commies from the very beginning from strikes in the 50s to solidarity in the 80s. The commies knew their system would eventually collapse and poles would never accept it and they had that realization when the pope visited.


Not at all. English is one of the hardest languages to learn because of all the different rules and exceptions. Even pronunciation is far harder. In polish as Spanish, latin, russian and most other languages words are pronounced exactly as they are written. In English thats not the case as letters and combinations often have more than one sound. That's not the case in most languages where a letter has only one sound.

But yes I Also find the food disgusting. Aside from like 2 or 3 things - pierogi (But only the cheese and fruit ones, the meat and sauerkraut ones I find nasty), potato pancakes and kotlet schabowy, etc.

And the graffiti is obnoxious. Everywhere you look its all tagged up. And they're not like murals or anything artistic. In the suburb outside of wroclaw where some of my familt lives the local board made a skate park where the kids can tag as they please. That seemed to solve the problem atleast for a small town

You started with an insult, so fy.


It took a lot more collaborators than "surviving jews, other minorities and a few polish commies" to run the system from, say, 1950 to 1960.

Whoever was in charge, or what was their religion, did not matter to me. What mattered was that I was in prison. Only mentally ill feel love for their prisons. Like in the Stockholm syndrome.

Yes most were russians. For example in the polish military something like 8 or 9 out of every 10 officers were russians (technically soviets). Almost all the polish military officers were killed especiall at katyn. UB was majority jewish as were numerous ministerial positions.

The red army came first then the Soviet bureaucrats, agent d provacateuers, internal security, propagandists, etc which were propped up using force from the red army. The jews, minorities, and a small portion of poles were mainly a 5th column.

Even at pzprs peak membership was about a tenth of of the population and most of the poles that did join did it to get the basics they needed to survive and to have a half decent job, especially if you're a white collar professional.

As time went on poles saw there was no way they were kicking out the Soviets and they knew their fate was sealed. So all they could do was male the best out of a bad situation and survive.

It was a well oiled and proven system that was very hard to work against, as the free Polish government in London and us exiles found to our cost, many poor Polish souls were either murdered or jailed attempting to disrupt this mechanism

The big problem was that there was no material support from western governments to help undermine this control system.

You started to insult people like Pilecki and thousands of others first..

I just don't like people like Obama or you trashing and disseminating such terrible, terrible lies about Polish history and Poles eg Obama stating that there were "Polish death camps" or you stating that Poles willingly embraced and accepted communism from Russia...

That's one "get-out" clause. Any other old chesnuts that people come out with to excuse themselves? And all the while disparaging real heroes like Walesa?

You mean BOLEK who had worked for 25 years for SB, UB and other Polish and Soviet communists and all that time taking money and bribes for being a spy traitor and an agent in the Solidarity movement?

Don't forget jaruzelski and his family... Even today they go to dinners hosted by the Kremlin

Walesa was a joke. I remember when he said he would turn poland into Japan rofl


Not till the 80s anyway and even then it was minimal. They only started helping once it was convenient - after poles Czechs and the baltics already did the heavy lifting and ussr under gorby was on its last legs

You mean like the one you came up with where Polish women would still have hairy legs if it was not for the EU.

Ha ha yes I remember this as well. Unfortunately naive and gullible Poles believed him 100% in 1991.. that's why they are so poor and destitute now and dream of immigrating to the UK now.. Walesa is an antiPolish anticatholic jew with the real name Lejba Kohne..

BTW how many billions of $ did us and EU companies steal from Poland between 1989 and 2018 by taking over Polish economy and its large market and destroying natural Polish competitors?

I was talking about Poles who signed up for the Party, who suddenly forgot their catholic past, and who were unable to take communion as Party members. Where does all this sit in Adrians' false world of an oh so pious Polish society?

And those of you who sneer at Walesa should remember that you would still be eating Babcia's sad perogi and eating those Polish strange shaped tomatoes, as well as ogling the girls with their hairy legs, if it weren't for the likes of him.

Were other people's parents so brave? I remember my Polish families' neighbours turning white and shaking, when I told a couple of peoples' deputies to go **** themselves. They set about telling me how those scum deserved respect, because they were "there for our benefit."