Your President Casimir Kosinski

I would like to welcome the new member of our Club: Paul G. Novakovski. Paul was sworn in during the January membership meeting. The following applicants were approved by the membership: Norbert Szostek, Jill Foster, M. Catherine McLean and Ariel O’Brien. The approved applicants need to be sworn-in to become the full member. Swear-in ceremony is held during the membership meetings.

  I had an interesting discussion with one of our members about Polish history. Practically, American schools do not teach Polish history. There is a vast bibliography regarding this topic. Unfortunately it is mostly in the Polish language. If you are thinking about finding such resources on the Internet, please, be warned that one looking for such resources must be careful in selecting their reading. Available English language resource in the Internet might be skewed badly. Chauvinistic aggressive groups upload selected propaganda glorifying even war criminals. Their justification always is “he fought for our independence in time of war” and they insist that in time of war “every mean is justified”. 

    For an example, lately a president of the country (neighboring with Poland) recognized officially as “the national hero” a person who served with his military and paramilitary followers under Nazi command and committed mass killings using horrific tortures for purpose of “cleansing of our land”. By the way, after a short time the Polish underground organized an effective resistance. The mentioned “hero” even got a monument in the central square of the capital city. The local police keep it under constant surveillance to prevent any damages to the monument. The local youth hangs out in the square and calls the monument “the gallows”. It is not clear whether the name is after the shape of monument or “deserved award” or may be both. The president had an approval rate about 5% and chauvinistic propaganda did not help him. He suffered an embarrassing defeat in just finished election. Quite similar situation happened in the other country, neighbor of Poland and the member of UE. Their general was recognized as “a national hero”. The justification was – during WWII he organized volunteer army of 20 thousands but refused to go to the eastern front so saved life of his soldiers. Well, he reported directly to the local Nazi chief of police and SS. No wander that he had chosen to attack Polish villages instead of fighting against the advancing Red Army. The regional Polish underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa) was mobilized and most of the attackers were forced to surrender, give up their arms and uniforms – practically in a cold weather they went back just in their underwear. Furious Nazis gave them brooms and ordered to parade (still in their underwear) from the main square to the railway station then sent them to Germany as foreign slave workers.

   Please, understand that such incidents are rather examples of bad choices made by politicians and chauvinistic organizations and do not represent opinion of whole population in their countries.

    I would recommend study of Polish history from books by Norman Davies. He is the British historian widely recognized for knowledge of history of Eastern and Central Europe. Here are his book titles :

1. White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919–20.  2. God's Playground. A History of Poland. (vol.1 & vol.2)  3. Rising '44. The Battle for Warsaw.   4. Europe: A History.

   Also you may get some more book titles from Polish bookstores in the USA. I usually use www.polonia.com from Chicago, Illinois. They have the bilingual homepage and the nice search setup. Lately one of popular news media compared the current political situation in the US to a situation in Poland in 18^th century. So, a little bit of knowledge of Polish history might  be a guide for US voters.

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Meets every 3^rd Monday 7:00 PM at

St. Stephens Church

16^th  and Northern Ave.

Phoenix, Arizona