[bert04]

Wolę ten:

As a Pole I feel both outraged and embarassed.

This is supposed to be a historical clip by Institute for National Remembrance - an institution devoted to uncovering hard truths about the nation's history due to decades of Soviet-imposed communist regime. It's meant to deal with repressions, terror, infiltration of the society by communists secret police, genocides and WW2 atrocities. It is meant to uncover the truth.

Let me repeat this. It is an institution which is tasked with providing an objective view of history focusing on the most divisive and controversial aspects of it. And it produced a clip that is offensive in its simplicity and unnerving in its bias. It is the equivalent of a cartoon where a polandball figure is riding a garbage bin with hussar wings and screaming "kurwa!".

Again... a state institution tasked with the most challenging and controversial historical events!

It is a painfully bad mythologized jingoistic rendition of alternative history. An offensive slideshow of some of the worst and dumbest propaganda I've seen. Very much in line with the way the shitty government that Poland has now views the world. It makes me feel embarrassed of being a Pole actually.

Polan stronk and so badly it hurts. My butt hurts. It does. Oh my fucking god it does.

So here are some facts regarding what the clip tells you.

In 1939 Poland was defeated within first couple of days by Germans because of sheer incompetence of Polish command and government. Soviets entered only after Germany overrun almost the entire country and Polish army was forbidden to fight them by the Polish government because those were the specific conditions of the alliance with Britain. It is true that Soviets and Germans had an arrangement but the Soviets did not act on it until Germany did all the work for them so that they could look like liberators.

Soviets deported Poles from part of Poland as means of an ethnic cleansing of the regions where the majority were Ukrainians and Belarussians. Also the Katyn massacre was directed at the military cadres and not regular Poles. Most peple don't realize this - and the politically-motivated IPN won't admit - but since 1926 Poland was ruled by a fascist-like junta and they were an authoritarian regime with fascist elements by their own admission (see government-sanctioned encyclopedias from the 1930s! I have one myself.). The military staged a coup and overthrew a democratically elected government and imprisoned many of the opposition politicians and activists. Those are the "patriots" we are supposed to be proud of.

Monte Cassino wasn't "conquered" but was finally taken by Poles after waves upon waves of exhausting assaults by other Allied troops. It is one of the most well known myths of Polish participation in WW2 much like the cavalry fighting German tanks with mounted charges.

The story of Witold Pilecki (the man who infiltrated Auschwitz) is a true (and astounding) one but "nobody listened to us" or "politics was more important" is hardly how it went. It was simply too unbelievable at the time and we have the documents to back it up. People who made this spot simply didn't care because it is so important to show Poland as the only noble country when everyone else was cynical.

Enigma is a story that has a significant Polish contribution but it is a small one at the very beginning and was hardly something that the entire success of the Allied counter-effort hinged on. The initial codes were useless by the time war began in the West and other Allies' intelligence had as much role to play in capturing them as Poles.

The Warsaw Uprising was the single most horrific thing ordered by the commanders of the Polish Home Army who fearing Soviet repressions (directed against the officers who were executed, not the regular soldiers who were just pressed into the army) started the most needless bloodbath which brought about the destruction of the city and deaths of thousands of civilians including children (yes, child soldiers were a thing!). And all of it while knowing that neither the Allies nor the supreme commander in London did not support the plan for an uprising but the shithead politicians of the government in exile did however...so it was a political decision to sacrifice civilians.

There were enough people in Poland who were not happy with the fascist-like government before 1939 that they believed the communists and went along with the fake/rigged elections and other nonsense which was put in place to take over the country. It was not the entire country against the Soviets but more like something that is currently happening in Syria, with plenty of factions fighting for power. And never forget that it wasn't a good democratic government being crushed by evil communists. This was a choice between the former fascist junta and communists puppets and the mostly decent agrarian party was stuck somewhere in the middle (ad got screwed by the communists in the end, obviously). Yes Poland was screwed but only by geography. Not even the Poles had a will to fight on and many of the former Home Army ended up robbing the populace to support their rebellion against the Soviets. (and now these people are uniformly treated as "heroes" by the government)

Finally there was many more than just Polish strikes, rebellions and other acts of civic resistance during the Soviet period. Hungary and Czechoslovakia fought back with just as much determination, and arguably more. The riots in 1956 weren't as intense as the Hungarian revolution. Nothing came even close to the 1968 attampt in Czechoslovakia which was ended by an invasion by the Soviet Union. Communism wasn't "overthrown" as much as it collapsed because it was simply a terrible system that could not maintain operation and provide decent standard of living. Poland had the first free election in the Soviet bloc (june 1989) but it was an election for 30% of seats and it wasn't until December 1990 before free presidential election and another year before a free parliamentary election while in Czechoslovakia the election was for full democratic government already in June 1990 and Havel was elected president already in 1989.

This spot takes almost every single thing Poland did wrong and distorts it to show as something great and glorious and to be proud of. Even the story of Pilecki is cringeworthy.

What this clip wont tell you is that when in 1991 the opposition parties (the anti-communists) won an overwhelming majority in the parliament for the first time they fucked up so badly within two years.. that the communists returned to power (as social democrats) andtwice! The only two-term president of free Poland was a former communist politician who got elected with a full majority (60%) in first round on his second run.

Incidentally people who ruined the anti-communist government with their in-fighting and stupidity in 1991-1993 are the same people who are ruling the country now. If this clip was commissioned by the IPN it's been approved by the politicians in power.

This current government is run by idiots and for idiots (their core electorate are pensioners, uneducated people, football hooligans, welfare recipients, strongly religious people, people with many children dependent on state aid) who would rather sit knee-deep in shit with their heads in fantasy land than do actual work to change the country for the better. This - a cheap Soviet-like propaganda - is how they want the country run. If you wonder why they constantly feud with the EU there's your answer. They're bolshevik-like morons who want to rule the country like Lukashenka does in Belarus or Putin does in Russia. But Polan Stupid... I mean Stronk! Stronk! Polan Stronkest!



EDIT:

People who don't understand the venom in my comment. The government which sponsored this video is the government which decided to start up the nonsense with reparations from Germany for the war despite the fact that:

(a) there is no legal basis for it,
(b) the occupying power responsible for handling reparations was Soviet Union so the claim should be directed at Moscow,
© it was the 45 years of communism and not the war that really is the problem for Poland,
(d) Germany was the strongest supporter of Poland being accepted into the EU and NATO before it was ready.

They are just the epitome of an entitled asshole who will take money, demand more and then offend everyone around when something is asked of them (and no, I am not a great fan of redistribution of migrants) and call it "recovering national pride".

These are the people who actually say that what happened in Turkey was a good thing! I mean seriously! After it was obvious that Turkey both runs an authoritarian coup, destabilizes Europe and sponsors terrorism in Syria.. they still think they are a valuable ally and a political partner.

Ok, I'll stop now.

EDIT2:

The interesting bit is that I got banned on some subs for defending mu country's history in a way that was considered politically incorrect (for example the view that Poles are vicious anti-semites which is not true and offensive) and here dumb fucks accuse me of being a communist sympathizer or a propagandist because my comment doesn't fit in their limited dumbfuck understanding of the world as prescribed by a narrow political ideology of their favourite political party. Even when I was 16 I wasn't that stupid about politics and the world.