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I'm from Poland and recently got interested in German history and culture. A month ago I went to vis...
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I dont get why the poles hold a grudge. Afaik there is literally noone alive that had anything to do with anything that happend there in WW2.
Similarly, I guess there are very few poles alive that experienced it.
I suspect the reason is that certain politicians deliberately keep these grudges alive. Especially the "Germany and Russia secretly colluding against Poland" conspiracy theories.
Trade is not collusion.
That's absolute bullshit. Poland itself was highly dependent on Russian gas until 2022 when Gazprom stopped deliveries after Poland refused to pay in roubles.
Poland buys gas directly from Russia, but if Germany does the same, it's "collusion".
Objections against Nordstream in Europe were mostly limited to Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic countries and instigated/used by nationalist movements like PiS to fuel anti-German resentments.
There we are coming near to the real reason. Beeing able to trade with russia without having to pay transit money to poland is the reason, poland was crying over north stream. As long as Poland get paid for the pipeline its fine with russian gas
Intergenerational trauma is a thing, though. Many many people all over the world are affected by wars that their parents or grandparents lived through.
Yes, especially as over 50% of their country was German territory and over 10 Million people were brutally expelled with nearly 2 Million deaths. And Poles deny even to remember. So the view on history is very unbalanced in my view.
That’s part of why Germans aren’t popular with their victims.
Those people weren’t brutally expelled, the vast majority of them fled because they were scared the Russians would do to them what they did to all the people in Poland and so on.
Most died of hunger and freezing as they had to flee through the wasteland they caused.
Mind you those people were the strongest supporters of Hitler and the genocide against poles by far and had family histories going back centuries murdering poles, attempting to erease the culture and language, taking Polish land etc. germanisierung was the precursor to what Germans did in the 30s and 40s.
Yet all Germans care about is paying the SS monsters who did the unthinkable crimes and repeating lies like you did to present themselves as victims. Germans are perpetrators.
Maybe if your country didn’t start a brutal war and didn’t decide to genocide millions of people, it wouldn’t lose any territory
Well if it worked I likely wouldn’t be even alive today, cause Germany wanted all of us either dead or working for you as slaves
I dislike poles because they're always begging for money and for Germany to pay up for shit we didn't do. Our grandparents our great grand parents did it not us. Yet we are to pay. Regardless of us already having paid. And the poles getting lots of our money from EU.
But the pole keeps begging for more. Otherwise we are nazi.
There are wayyy too many poles in my tiny town and all of them talk about how much superior polska is to Germany. Like, if it's so great, why are you even here 😭
Because Germany would’ve fallen apart 20 years ago without Poland
Yeah, surely germany would've fallen apart without all those polish cleaning ladies and Asparagus cutters. That's why polska gets billions of our monies to this day, as a thank you.
You haven’t paid shit and your genocidal grandparents didn’t pay shit either and never took responsibility
You're lying about something.
It did have some significant effects. Not to mention earlier history
Im sure there are still some effects from WW2 everywhere on the world. But I wouldn't hold a grudge against a danish man because of a war in 1864. He wasnt in it, neither was I.
I don't know what earlier history youre reffering to, sorry.
I still hold a grudge to Italy because rome invaded germanic territories
ja aber die strassen, die städte, das recht und nicht zuletzt der wein (und wie es hier früher aussah darüber sprechen wir besser nicht).....also was haben die römer je für uns getan ? vorsichtshalber /s
Naja, es sah hier deutlich besser aus als uns heute von den Medien dargestellt wird. Am Ende haben die Germanen, bevor sie die Römer besiegt haben nicht geschrieben. Also sind heutige Schriftquellen dieser Zeit über die Germanen alle römisch. Das ist so als ob du wissen willst, wie Westeuropa heute ist, hast aber nur russische Propagandasendungen als Quellen. Wenn die Germanen wirklich so gewesen wären wie die Römer es uns weis machen, dann hätten sie diese nicht besiegt. Hast du dich mal gefragt, warum Frauenrechte in Nordeuropa so viel besser sind als in Südeuropa? Ganz einfach die Römer waren sehr Frauenfeindlich wohingegen Frauen bei den Germanen vergleichsweise großen Einfluss und Macht hatten.
äh das /s hast du gesehen ? ausserdem ist das eine homage an das leben brian...und jetzt chleudert den purchen zu poden...^^
Ich schreib das schon 100 mal ok :( Wusste aber nicht ob das s sich auf alles bezieht.
I don’t personally hold a grudge but as you said, other grievances exist from the era around the world. Actually, many grievances from before then linger.
As to prior history - the complicated relationship between the predecessor states of German and Polish origin.
Ie: Teutonic Order and Poland, Austrian and Prussian relationships with Poland-Lithuania afterwards, Three partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and subsequent rule (Austria, Prussia, {Russia}).
Polish nationalism is quite strong and yes, can go back to bringing up what others might call ancient arguments.
Not my personal opinion.
which for all Germans and really all West Europeans sounds absolutely insane and unhinged. To think modern politics and attitudes should be influenced by some Medieval Battles like those of the Teutonic Order and Poland is so absurd to the ears of Western Europeans that it sounds like a joke.
Maybe you’d feel differently if you were the perpetual victim for centuries not the perpetual aggressor. Eastern Europe remembers and studies history to make choices to never have it happen again and prepare themselves when it does happen. It’s the opposite of unhinged.
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Restore AllHide UnarchivedSure.
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Restore AllHide UnarchivedSo many incredibly wrong things written there.
First off, most Germans either dont think of Poland at all, or view it relatively favourably (mostly because all they know of Poland is that Polish immigrants to Germany are hard-working and white).
Second, all Germans learn in school of the Nazi occupation of Poland. There is no intentional ignoring of Poland specifically. That idea that you have is on the contrary a right-wing propaganda talking point invented by the modern Polish far-right and PiS-party to rally the Polish population by seeing Germany as Polands enemy and to frame Poland as the biggest victim of WW2.
Third, the reason why you might perceive Germany "caring" more for Jewish and Russian victims, maybe has to do with the fact that 6 million Jews were killed in a systematic genocide and death camps, and over 27 million people of the Soviet Union died in WW2. In contrast, "only" 1.7 million ethnic Poles died in WW2, a much lower number.
It's also just wrong and on the verge of holocaust denial to say Nazis were "systematically killing millions of Poles". No, Poles were never persecuted by the Nazis like Jews, Roma and Sinti, etc. were. Ethnic Poles were never put into death camps.
Please stop spreading PiS propaganda.
Most Jews were Polish citizens, and many Poles became guilty by informing the Gestapo about where they lived – a part of history that many in Poland do not like to talk about. At the same time, the behavior of Poles during the occupation was extremely mixed: it ranged from acts of courage and selfless heroism to indifference, and even to betrayal.
Don’t forget how brutal Germans treated poles, they would get executed for literally nothing.
Considering how bad the situation was they did so much for the Jews.
In contrast to that Germans had basically nothing to fear in comparison and Germans did absolutely nothing to stop the horrific genocide of close to 30mln people. They supported it a lot tho
6 millions poles were murdered systematically, the attempt to dimish German crimes by acting like your family only murdered 6 million Jews is actually a crime in Germany
2 of my 4 grandparents are still alive and were present during this time (and no, they weren't babies or whatever either). Sure, they are in their 90s, so they are the last generation who actively remember this period. But my parents were born in the 50s lol it's not like shit was great for them either. The ripples were felt for a long time. If anything, German-Polish relations are much better than one would expect after that kind of war occurring in recent history, mostly because a bigger and longer-lasting boogeyman took over shortly thereafter. It also helps that Germany had to cede a lot of territory to Poland, so in some sense reparations were pretty immediately paid.
There are plenty of longer standing beefs throughout the world that are even longer away from the initial event. It's just like that sometimes.
Not really. You act like Poland was the only victim of WW2, but Germany occupied most of Europe. But in no other country in the world will you find such an extreme and especially politicised Anti-German hate as in Poland, not even in the actual biggest victims of WW2 like Israel or Russia.
Being at war or just occupied because you surrendered or sided with Nazis vs never surrendering and fighting underground while your population is being subjected to unprecedented genocide on an industrial scale is a tiny bit different experience I’d imagine.
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Restore AllHide UnarchivedWe had a huuuge population of Jews in my town, they were our neighbours, close friends and so on. These were Polish Jews. Part of our community and I’ll be honest I have no idea if I have any Jewish ancestors as it’s quite possible. I definitely had one German ancestor too. Regardless, an attack on them is an attack on poles just the same.
To cite: “The Polish Underground State (or Polish Secret State) was a phenomenon unparalleled in any other occupied country. While other nations had powerful resistance movements and governments-in-exile (many based in London), no other country developed such a deeply covert and active de facto state apparatus within its occupied territories. “
The extent of damage in Poland was huge, only Soviet Union was more devastated but that’s not even one country so it’s impossible to compare.
Anyways, hope you have a good night.
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Restore AllHide UnarchivedCherry picking doesn’t reflect well on you. If you have to know almost all Polish people come up with some Jewish dna according to ancestry dna. As many married into Polish families… many abandoned their faith and became Christian too allowing them to marry. Adam Mickiewicz mother was Jewish turned Christian and yet he became our national poet.
In the 13th century, when jews in the rest of Europe were experiencing persecution and sometimes expulsion, Boleslaus the Pious of Poland established 'The General Charter of Jewish Liberties in Poland" a law that established Poland as a safe haven for Jews. The Charter was reaffirmed by Polish Monarchs for the following 300 years. Until WW2, Poland was home to the largest Jewish population in the world. The anti-semitism many Jews report as existing in the Poland they knew between the World Wars was a new phenomenon that emerged after the Partition of Poland in 1795 that wiped Poland off the map. The laws and attitudes of the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian occupiers affected how Jews were treated, and when Poland was restored after WW1, the new nation was more nationalistic and xenophobic than the previous 'more political' state had been. Despite all this it was still the most Jewish friendly nation in Europe by a long shot. There’s a reason why Poland has the most individuals recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, with 7,280 people honored for their actions during the Holocaust by aiding and saving the Jews while also risking their lives because it was a crime punishable by death under the German occupation. That law only existed in Poland btw. I wonder if it’s because we hated Jews so much? In other countries it was mostly a prison sentence not public hanging for everyone to see.
Pogroms were horrific and were being prosecuted by the underground government and they never had wider support from the public and officials but they were also later used and directed by the Soviets. In Jedwabne only 40 poles took part in this and according to historians: "the undisputed bosses of life and death in Jedwabne were the Germans," who were "the only ones who could decide the fate of the Jews." If you fail to remember Poland was an occupied nation from 39 by the Germans and then Russians so it’s not like they could do what they want. The war for us lasted till 1993. You’re trying to skew history to match your antipolish narrative. But do whatever suits you.
Trying to wash German hands from Jewish blood is a huge and absolutely unhinged reach. Poland was under no circumstances saint and has a lot to answer for but it was nowhere near as bad as elsewhere in Europe and especially Germany so genuinely…take a day off. These things are completely incomparable.
A German scolding Poles for antisemitism. My lord you really can’t make this up. Absolutely hilarious, thanks I had a good laugh.
Because pretty much every pole has grandparents that wake up at nights with the horrors of what Germans did to them, Germany has laid zero reparations to those people but make sure to secure the monsters that murdered and raped millions of poles great pensions and a safe live in the middle of German society.
Meanwhile Germany has arrogantly cooperated with Russia building up what we see in Ukraine now and still a sizeable number of Germans think Russia ain’t that bad.
Did you know there is not a single Denkmal for the 6 million civilians brutally murdered by Germans?
Germans are certainly to blame for this too. You're already a reactionary guy. And uneducated at that. Or you are deliberately telling lies.
That’s not entirely true. While I’m rather neutral towards Germany the history is very much alive in peoples memory so it’s not very distant to many of us. It will depend on your personal circumstances. I grew up near Auschwitz and my grandfather and a big portion of my neighbours survived the war and/or the camps. When you’re surrounded by living pieces of history, their stories, the buildings and artefacts and your parents show you photographs of family members you’ll never meet because they were not so lucky… it just doesn’t feel very distant. You’re getting first hand information all the time. Tragedies like this permanently alter entire family systems so it’s not likely to disappear within a generation or two. Poland has lost 17% of population so pretty much every single family was affected. I find it hard to believe that Germans are all fine now with the amount of people they’ve also lost. My point is, I don’t think that’s particularly unusual. And I don’t care what politicians say, I don’t blame modern day German but I simply remember what their grandparents had done as it deeply impacted my life too and how I view the world at large.
A lot of them also feel that their political opinions or interests were consistently disregarded by Germany. For example in the context of Russia (NorthStream) or refugees (europaische Verteilung during Merkel).
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Restore AllHide UnarchivedAbsolutely it would surprise me.
Ive never met a Jewish person that held a grudge against modern-day germans, only Poles.
yes?
I'm not saying there's any logic behind it, it's just I understand it might be difficult to let go of such sentiments. Also Germany treated the Poles well... badly, not just during the WW2 but for centuries prior. Goethe, von Bismarck and others were very vocal with their opinions on the Poles. We learn that at school and for some reason most people fear the Germans nowadays may have similar attitudes
I think the grudge is probably justified when thinking about what we did to Poles in WW2. Pretending that grudges have to be rational is a bit one-dimensional. Emotions towards topics like war crimes are never, and will never be, a completely rational thing.
Why “we”? I didn't harm anyone and neither did my family (who are now alive). What happened before that, I don't know. My two grandfathers died in the East; I don't think they allowed themselves to be shot voluntarily.
If they were in the East chances are very high they were actually taking part in genocide, rapings and slavery.
Who do you think did tape hundred of thousand of women from Poland, Ukraine and Belarus in Wehrmachtsbordelle?
By this logic, no one is allowed to be upset about a historical grievance of any kind. Or is there a statue of limitation?