Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Haaretz: Turks Watch ISIS Menace Kurds in Kobani Just as Soviets Watched Nazis Destroy Warsaw, 1944

From Haaretz:

"If Turkey allows Kobani to be put to the sword, it will be one of the great defaults by a NATO country. The inaction of the Turks calls to mind Warsaw in 1944, when tanks of the Red Army stood in their tracks on the east side of the Vistula, their guns silent, while the Free Polish Army rose up and fought the Nazis until the Nazis destroyed Free Poland’s hope. That’s how the Soviets came to seize what was left of Poland."


2 comments:

  1. On Facebook Marcin Grabowski reminded me of another side of Turkey.

    Information below and link:

    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

    ReplyDelete
  2. 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.

    ReplyDelete

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.
Your comment is more likely to be posted if:
Your comment includes a real first and last name.
Your comment uses Standard English spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Your comment uses I-statements rather than You-statements.
Your comment states a position based on facts, rather than on ad hominem material.
Your comment includes readily verifiable factual material, rather than speculation that veers wildly away from established facts.
T'he full meaning of your comment is clear to the comment moderator the first time he or she glances over it.
You comment is less likely to be posted if:
You do not include a first and last name.
Your comment is not in Standard English, with enough errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar to make the comment's meaning difficult to discern.
Your comment includes ad hominem statements, or You-statements.
You have previously posted, or attempted to post, in an inappropriate manner.
You keep repeating the same things over and over and over again.