#poland

And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews. And not just a great number, but a great proportion. The proportion was especially high in the secret police and 'security' departments, where no doubt revenge played its own part, as did the ideological attachment to Communism that was so strong among internationally minded Jews at that period: Jews like David Szmulevski. There were reasonably strong indigenous Communist forces in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, but in Hungary and Poland the Communists were a small minority and knew it, were dependent on the Red Army and aware of the fact, and were disproportionately Jewish and widely detested for that reason. Many of the penal labor camps constructed by the Nazis were later used as holding pens for German deportees by the Communists, and some of those who ran these grim places were Jewish. Nobody from Israel or the diaspora who goes to the East of Europe on a family-history fishing-trip should be unaware of the chance that they will find out both much less and much more than the package-tour had promised them. It's easy to say, with Albert Camus, 'neither victims nor executioners.' But real history is more pitiless even than you had been told it was. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#camus #communism #czechoslovakia #david-szmulevski #east-germany

My message to the Americans, to the American President, is that I am coming from Poland, which is in good shape; it is much different than ten years ago when last state visit from Poland was here in the United States. ↗

— Aleksander Kwasniewski

#am #american #american president #coming #different

My name was originally John Collins, but I just didn't think it had the flair I needed. I found out the poet laureate of Poland was named Krasinski and so it seemed like a shoe-in for show business. ↗

— John Krasinski

#collins #flair #found #had #i

I am obsessed with the process of creation. ↗

— Zdzisław Beksiński

#painter #poland #polish #art

And I used to go the punk clubs such as a gay club in Poland Street that everyone would go to because it was the only place you could go to looking like that without getting beaten senseless. ↗

— Gary Numan

#because #club #clubs #could #everyone

When people are coming to Krakow and we show them how and where we practice, they are like, 'Seriously? Are you kidding me?' But we're always saying that what matters about the courts - the lines, the nets - are the same. I'm practicing in Poland even when I don't have good facilities. ↗

— Agnieszka Radwanska

#always #coming #courts #even #facilities

There's no question that Stalin broke the agreements made at Yalta completely about elections that were supposed to be held immediately in Poland, and Eastern Europe was plunged into slavery as a consequence. ↗

— Mark Shields

#agreements #broke #completely #consequence #eastern

It has been said that Poland is dead, exhausted, enslaved, but here is the proof of her life and triumph. ↗

— Henryk Sienkiewicz

#dead #enslaved #exhausted #her #here

I interviewed survivors, I went to Poland, saw the cities and spent time with the people and spoke to the Jews who had come back to Poland after the war and talked about why they had come back. ↗

— Steven Spielberg

#after #back #cities #come #had

There are enough Poles in Chicago to make up one of the largest cities in Poland. ↗

— Suzanne Fields

#cities #enough #largest #make #make up