pieroggi:

100 years of Polish Independence?

Has it been already 100 years since Poland was erased from the map for 123 years by the Germans, Austrians and Russians in 1795?

100 years isn’t even that long.

All the blood that was lost for an independent Poland.

All the pain, tears and loss that it experienced from their own neighbours.

My grandma who was only 8 years old when she witnessed an ethnic genocide when the Ukrainians who sided with the Nazis burnt down her village east of Lwów and many others in Eastern Galicia (Now Ukraine) and murdered my great grandparents and many other people in her village right in front of her during ww2, and ran away with her sister and my grandpa to Bielsko Biała in south Poland. And later had to ran away again from Communist Poland in the 1980s with her children (Including my mom) to Italy with nothing with them for a search of a better life for themselves. The Italian government wanted to throw them out as they were illegal emigrants and didn’t want to come back to Poland, and later moved to Canada when my mom married my dad (whom also ran away from Poland to Italy and met there) where later me and my brother were born.

My ancestors who were sent to Austwitz and to other concentration camps because we were seen as “non human” and “savages” in the eyes on the Nazis. And that about ¼ of the population was murdered including all the Jews who were Polish citizens.

The time the Nazis bombed Warsaw to ashes because we tried to stand up for ourselves? And had to rebuilt the whole city from scratch. Thus why Warsaw is known as the “Phoenix city”.

The times I walked around my dads village in eastern Poland (by the Belorussian border) and saw the scars that Poland went through from the Russians.

The times when speaking Polish and celebrating our traditions was discouraged and punished. They tried to strip us away from the thing that made us Polish and tried to destroy our beautiful culture.

No other country knows pain and loss like Poland does, and I am thankful for my ancestors for fighting for the freedom of my own people. I am beyond proud to call myself Polish.

Happy 100 years of Independence Poland 🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱💕💕💕

Wszystkiego Najlepszego z okazji 100 lat niepodległości Polski! 🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱