[dfwgator]

And then there was after the war, where Poles who fought for the AK (Armia Krajowa) were executed by the Soviets.

[SJackson]

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

As far as I know, Polish-Americans never talk about these horrors. I wonder how many know about them. Not many, I suspect. I can’t recall a single Polish-American I’ve ever known who felt that historical abuse of Poles entitled them to anything.

In my experience they know. Maybe less in the younger generation, but I suspect their families teach them. What they don't have is the sense of entitlement. I can think of acquaintances, Lebanese, Mexican, Egyption, Iraqi, Vietnamese, Chinese, Cuban, all sorts of eastern Europeans and more who not only don't feel a sense of entitlement, but would likely tell those who do to find a better country and move there. As they did coming here. It's a big world.

[throwthebumsout]

Don’t try to confuse these young minds with facts. Facts are racist! /s

[Thilly Thailor]

I'm 63 years old. I had occasion to speak with a gaggle of blood-related millennials this weekend. The conversation turned to BLM etc. The thing that struck me about the conversation was their apparent assumption that I didn't understand that slavery was really, really bad. The undertone of the conversation seemed to be that I simply didn't FEEL the requisite moral outrage for the unforgivable collective sin of slavery.

I remember when I was a kid in the 60s William F. Buckley, Jr. said of the hippie generation that "they think they discovered sex and socialism." Some of it is the very forgivable (but nevertheless terribly annoying) self righteousness of youth. I'll let that pass. But seriously, is this really what they're saying? That slavery was really bad? That's it? That's their contribution to the centuries-long national conversation?

[Dagnabitt]

BLM is religion. It does not require a basis in fact.

[Freeleesy]

Unrelated specifically but related in general:
I watched in horror, on Tucker’s show last night, the poor guy in Portland..

[IndispensableDestiny]

I can’t recall a single Polish-American I’ve ever known who felt that historical abuse of Poles entitled them to anything.

It doesn't, says this Pole. Yet, don't focus on 1939 to 1989. In parallel to demands of BLM and decedents of US slaves, look further back. Look to the Crimean Tatar and Nogai Horde enslavement of eastern Europeans and sale to Constantinople, the Middle East, Genoa, and Venice. It continued from the mid 15th century until the Russians took over Crimea in the 18th. Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarus and others were captured and sold. Well over a million souls.

The Cossacks arose partially to fight the slavers. The Soviets expelled every Crimean Tatar from Crimea (free Ukraine began allowing them to return). The Poles have a saying. Instead of "I need this like a hole in my head," some say "I need this like a Tatar in the kitchen."

[schurmann]

The USA owes more to some individual Poles than many of our fellow citizens know. Even self-designated conservatives who count themselves as having learned the “lessons of history.”

Two names from the 1775-1783 period:

Casimir Pulaski

Thaddeus Kosciuszko

Without their help the country may not have gotten very far out of the starting gate.

And Western Civ might have ceased to exist in the aftermath of the First World War: Lenin’s Reds marched on the West, but the Poles were the only ones to stand up to them, stopping them outside Warsaw in 1920.