Bieganski the Blog exists to further explore the themes of the book Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture.
These themes include the false and damaging stereotype of Poles as brutes who are uniquely hateful and responsible for atrocity, and this stereotype's use in distorting WW II history and all accounts of atrocity.
This blog welcomes comments from readers that address those themes. Off-topic and anti-Semitic posts are likely to be deleted.
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On Facebook Marcin Grabowski reminded me of another side of Turkey.
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Poland and Ottoman Turkey shared a common frontier for three or more centuries and though the two nations fought a number of wars with each other, they also had significant cultural interactions. The lasting effects of these were emphasized in a speech given at an International Academic Conference in April 2002 by Leszek Miller, then Poland's Prime Minister:
"For over one hundred years our country was erased from the map of Europe. It was partitioned between the closest neighbours. Recent friends and allies. Three powers of that time, deriving their own roots from the same culture, the same Christian civilization. The only neighbouring country, which never accepted the partitions of Poland, was the Ottoman Empire. The greatest Islamic country, which bordered on the historical Polish Commonwealth Republic for three centuries long, and on which our country has repetitively but reluctantly fought with military arms. One of the partitioning powers turned out to be Austria, which earlier had been defended and saved from the overwhelming Turkish invasion in 1683 by the Polish king Jan III Sobieski. The battle of Vienna is the subject of teaching for every single Polish child. But it also remembers that still two hundred years after that battle, it was at the Moslem Istanbul, at the Topkapi palace, that each year the Sultan was officially informed that the "The legate of Lechistan has not yet arrived", demonstrating in this way the refusal to recognize Poland's deprivation of its sovereignty."
http://info-poland.buffalo.edu/classroom/maps/new.html
It is good to see that popular knowledge, and appreciation, of such matters as the Soviet-betrayed nature of the Warsaw Uprising goes beyond Polish circles.
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