Why do Silesians hate Poland?

Hi!

I was wondering why people in Katowice hate Poland?

I noticed that while Poland considers itself as victims against Germany and Russia, the Silesians and Lithuanians consider Poland a brutal bully.

All this really confuses me.

Poland must be able to offer more money then Germanics offering. It would turn Poland from caterpillar to beautiful butterfly, in the eyes of Silesians.

Plus, Poland needs better connections with other Slavs. It would additionally convince Silesians.

@Crow: BS! I know Silesia and believe me, Poles there consider themselves Polish and don't dislike Poland. Instead of sticking to your Serbian medias, travel and you'll discover the world the way it is

InPolaska, what you want man? i`m not the one who started this thread. As we Polish and Serbian patriots say - Silesia is Poland, Kosovo is Serbia.

Anyway, there are elements in Silesia (sponsored by Germany) who oppose to Poland. We all know that. But, most of those elements could be seduced by Poland`s economic growth. For sure, if there is no love for Poland in Silesia, region would already been lost. There is love but, Germanic pressure is enormous.

Actually, the OP did have a historical point.

Katowice people hated the communist regime for their centralised government. It was felt that Silesians did all the work in the mines and foundries, while Poles elsewhere buggered about in the fields or in white-collar jobs, and that Warsaw robbed and redistributed the wealth.

All utter nonsense of course. There never was any wealth.

Hard coal earned vital foreign currency while it lasted, but lack of mining machinery, gross miss-management, and huge economy of scale in utterly useless heavy industrial product meant money was wasted on an epic scale. If it weren't for the IMF's 30 billion dollars in loans, there wouldn't have been a "modern" industrial infrastructure to be restructured.

Of course older Silesians who don't understand the market economy hanker back to the politics of the certain level of autonomy that Katowice and the area enjoyed in the inter-war period, a state that was to be restored to the region, because today it has it's local spending budgets and economic power base anyway, separate of state control.

Silesians and Lithuanians I know HATE Poland, as do most other nations that dealt with it. Most people consider Poland to be barbaric, aggressive and hypocritical.

What do you do for a living NotPolish? Just asking, because I sometimes tell other Americans to F off on this forum after a few sherberts.

Have you been drinking in this heat? :)

I have and am, but am still quite pleasant. That may change if you don't behave:)

Silesians don't hate Poland, I'm Silesian I don't hate Poland and none of my friends from Silesia do. Some Silesian people do feel a degree of unfairness. It's due to the fact that Silesia was the heart of Poland for a very long time due to heavy industry, coal mining and smelting going. All of the profits were going to Warsaw - they would like Silesia to be partially autonomous - in terms of ability to make important decisions about the region.

I refer you to my earlier post frd.

There WERE no "profits" - and Silesia today does have its' local budgets. So autonomy today is a concept in name only and the huge majority would vote against it.

It's annoying how reading this I mostly see polish people writing the tipical lies they keep feeding to everyone (mainly their kids) they teach everyone to hate silesia and silesians. Let me tell you I didn't have a nice childhood because of that. Constant bullying, hate, people didn't want to talk to me or be friends and the teachers... Oh joy =_= you think that since they are adults the would know not to behave like that.what I want to say is that it isn't really us that hate Poland but it's polish people that hate Silesia.

People in Katowice may consider themselves Poles, Silesians, Germans... as for their feelings toward Poland... it is better to ask them one by one if that's what interests you.

so is it something like the relationship between the English and the Welsh? Is there a separate language?

If you want a rough and not so much accurate comparison, you can say so, but we do not have the Prince of Silesia and there was never a war between Poland and Silesia.

Silesians do have Silesian language - the language of their home and heimat and unlike English and Welsh, Poles can understand much of it.

is that because they are essentially similar? The problem with English and Welsh is that they are so very different. Also only a small percentage of Welsh people actually do speak it properly...

OK so leaving the royals out of it (and what happened to the last true Princess of Wales the poor good woman)...is there a relationship based on insults similar to Welsh and english? for example the English call the Welsh 'sheep shaggers'. What the Welsh say about the English....well sadly most of us cannot understand a single word of Welsh..which is odd as London is less than 300 miles away.

Could a 'Polish' person recognise a Silesian from looks/accent etc?

If he is a regular miner... or if he is Kazimierz Kutz.

so all Silesians are miners are they? and Silesian is just a rregional dialect of Polish?

If they are not then they can be Silesians or Poles at their whims.

Yes!


Nope, Poles in general don't have any insult reserved to Silesians, and Silesians have only word for a person who might be born in Silesia but is not of Silesian origin, is that insulting - I don't think so.


If they i.e. Silesians speak their local dialect or on purpose use some Silesian accent and words - then yes. The thing is most of the Silesian can speak perfect Polish.

As for Looks - rather not, no.


Use to be before many mines has been closed.


That is my understanding of how things are.

Poles call Silesians by the affectionate name of Hanysy, this is for the popular first name Hans a familiar shortening of German or Dutch Johannes that is John. Silesians call Poles Gorole. First by this name, Prussian Silesians called Silesians from Cieszyn Silesia, then the people of Zagłębie Dąbrowskie and lastly all Poles but 'true Silesians '

The problem is that there are many Silesian dialects and not just one. Dialects of neighbouring areas in Silesia may differ quite a lot. This is the basic reason why a widely accepted "Sileasian language" standard has not been agreed upon among the Silesians themselves so far.

Basically, if you take a Silesian dilect spoken in the country, you will see there are strikingly much less words of German origin in it than in a Silesian dialect spoken in urban areas. Thus the original Silesian dialect is not farer away from standard Polish than any other Polish dialect in other areas of Poland like, for example, Mazovia. People are usually not aware of this fact and they tend to think the Silesian dialect is loaded with German words which may be true only in reference to urban Silesian.

The question of Silesian language is thus a political rather than a linguistic one.

Yeah.............So johnny and Mods? WTF? PS. On Topic. I lived in Silesia for 23 years and am entitled to complain about such an important thread being hijacked by a Serb nationalist. And if you want to call that out Johnny, then good luck with that.

Very interesting comments Ziemowit. I used to run a school in Chorzow and the local twang was very Germanic.

That's interesting...some german has survived in Silesia after the expulsions? Awesome. But I wonder how that happened. The german Silesians were supplanted by Poles from farther East after all..they must have brought their very own dialects and traditions with them...

More revived than survived. In the early 90s I knew a German guy in Poland who had been a social worker and became interested in Poland after working with a bunch of "Germans" from Silesia who'd migrated to Germany... and they didn't know any German when they arrived. They spoke standard Polish and Silesian... A former colleague who lived there in the late 1990s early 2000s said they'd put up German signs and some people had started speaking German (going back and forth between the two countries a lot)

There's also the question of Czech Silesia..

Have you ever been? It's a fascinating place, though Cesky Tesin is incredibly rundown compared to Cieszyn.

Dude, ask me if you want to learn anything.

Silesia est omnis divisa in partes tres.
1. We have an upper Silesia (this thread is about) where local population rebelled in an armed struggle three times against German rule in 20' of the 20th century. Most territory of the upper Silesia was a part of Poland sicne1922. Local population speaks a local dialect which is peppered with words from the German language due to their long under the rule first of the Austrian and later German empires.

2. There Silesia called Opol- szczyzna (Oppeln), although technically it is a part of the upper Silesia it is a separate region and constitutes a separate administrative district of Poland. There long local people who consider themselves to be Polish, some they came after the WWII are Germans left that at the present are heavily supported by the German state, hell they as a minority under the EU law they hold a seat in the Polish parliament.

Something which is denied to Poles in Germany.

3. Lower Silesia where you can find only very few leftovers from the German rule times. Alas some moved back, bought a house or a land that belonged to their ancestors and are doing OK.

I must use this opportunity lol! To say that those Germans are just germanised Slavic people. Hence unscientific and crazy ideology embraced by Hitler that acted to divide white people into some superficial racial sub-groups. He done more harm to the white people than all Muslim terrorist combined.

Yet Germans allegedly so clever and industrious people went/fell for it like a bunch of stupid sheeples. So they should thing twice rather then lecture others what is right and want is wrong and what countries in the EU shouldn't or should do.

OK dig over. Have a good day BB!

Now now Delph - you are being selective. Please don't tell me that Cieszyn is a tourist town. I used to frequent there every second Friday after college teaching: Tesin is the industrial part of the town as it was historically. It has always been ugly, apart from up by the park. However its' pubs (being Czech) are or at least were far superior to anything Cieszyn has to offer if you like good solid food and drink.'Tis true it has lost its' glamour for zloty earners because as you will know Czech used to be a boozers' paradise, with J&B and other quality whisky for 28 zl a bottle and the exchange rate was a steal.

Those were good days:)

Edit: Absolutely on topic MODS: You don't need me to tell you about the story of Lower Silesia/Tesin - which is one of the most regrettable stories in 20th century Polish history,


Sorry - upper Silesia of course....

Wow! That is new...


*waves back*

I dunno why I care here in Berlin, but somehow it's nice to know that some german-silesian has survived (or is revived) and didn't die with my grandparents and their folks...

you misunderstood - he is talking about German not Silesian - German. IF out there would be surviving some Silesian German it would be in Opole.

Those local folks there Dough talks about are using a dialect of the Polish language - geez.


Yep, the treacherous Czech gov grabbed it and Poland never got it back.

Internal politics - your history. I'm not taking sides. Much.