I don’t remember the movie title, but there was a funny moment when polish emigrant plans to go back to Poland. Someone is offering her a plastic bags,because most probably there are no such things in Poland. She answers “thank you, indeed in Poland we put our shopping to metal buckets…”.
Sounds funny? In late 90s my friend was still receiving bananas from his family that moved to Germany. And used clothes. People abroad thought that in shops there were still only illegal home made vodka and potatoes by this time.
In Poland we used to say that people from other countries expects polar bears on our streets.
Of course it’s getting better and better now. Now if you ask German what does he know about Poland he will tell you that it’s a place where they send their wrecked cars. More or less. When Poland was added to European Union Germans on the east changed doors and locks to most solid ones. Companies that installs alarm systems had their happy time.
Friend of mine starts some big deal with one west European company and they are still not sure if they should invest in Poland. “You know, numbers are quite good, but is it really stable and safe in Poland now?”.
Well… No dude… Bears on the street, buckets for shopping, old wrecked cars… By the way could you pay me in vodka and bananas?
When I was a kid I wonder how the hell is this possible that we are poor and in other countries they are so rich.
My friend’s father was in Germany working as a builder. His employer was pointing on him with his finger and explaining to the kids – “you should learn and finish studies or you will end up like this poor polish builder working physically whole days”. Thing is that my friend’s father is a physics doctor and knows three languages. Despite of this fact it was usually only possibility to earn some money to feed the family by this time.
Here we are getting to the point. Why is it so? Why are we now about 20 years behind Western Europe?
Well, it’s very simple. Because we were occupied very long time and most of polish patriots were killed by Germans and Russians during the war.
During the war our both occupiers killed not only polish soldiers, but also most of teaching staff, police officers, other patriots. Basically most of valuable persons. It’s according to 20/80 rule. Most important people were eliminated and it was enough to corrupt whole country for at least two generations.
Some of those people of course survived the war. Most of them were killed later by Russians.
1945 was not end of war for Poland. We were still occupied by Russians. They killed most of survivors from polish army. Good example is Witol Pilecki, author of Aushwitz report, big polish hero, captured and executed after fake trial.
Most of polish heroes were killed and defamed by Russian government. In many cases we don’t even know where those persons were buried. For Poland this was not just a war, all those actions were calculated by Russians to break our nation and they succeeded in big part.
This is why we are now about about 20 years behind Western Europe from political, industry and infrastructure point of view. Luckily we will now have second generation that is not contaminated by war nor occupation.
I just hope that this valuable 20% of polish people will stay in Poland…
