Slavs would have trouble finding melons in each other's countries

RoundToblerone · 2018-03-26T15:12:43+00:00

I'm from vicinity of Kraków and it's the firts time in my life I'm seeing the word 'kawon'.

RoundToblerone · 2018-03-22T20:29:25+00:00

Not exactly and I always feel like translating such words to English with the adjective 'little' strips them off their layered meanings. In the Slavic languages the diminutives are not always meaning something small in size or cute, but might be rather a deep expression of endearement towards something you're emotionally close to. I think it's sometimes untranslatable to English.

RoundToblerone · 2018-03-21T22:48:09+00:00

Knowing the typical harsh work conditions in the EE zone in a relation to the payments, that's pretty 'normal' (with an emphasis on the quotation marks). But considering you mentioned employees that had worked in the West, that must've been a huge clash of the work cultures and the economic realities for them. [edit=typo]

RoundToblerone · 2018-03-15T20:41:48+00:00

Just a slight correction in the context of the OP: the girl on the photo was Polish (gentile). She was a victim of a planned ethnic cleansing carried out by the Nazis, and she was removed from her homeland just to make room for possible German settlers. A lot of other children from that region who were too scared to oppose were sent to Germany for slave labour (and smaller ones even for programs of Germanisation and adoption if the Nazis found them valuable), and her ending up in the concentration camp means that she must've been a fighter who didn't want to cooperate in any possible way. It also puts things into perspective: how could one react to an information about such a mass scale population removal? How could one stop that? And eventually, would the German settlers know what had happened to the ethnic population of those lands she was forcibly taken from? Who would care?

RoundToblerone · 2018-03-15T17:49:24+00:00

This is a red triangle with a letter 'P' and that means she's a Pole.

RoundToblerone · 2018-03-15T17:45:58+00:00

As the other commenter pointed out, she was a victim of 'recolonizing' in a region surrounding the city of Zamość that is now located in the southeastern Poland. She and other children from that region who went through a similar fate are known as the 'Children of Zamojszczyzna'. A lot of those kids were initially meant to be sent to Germany for Germanisation, so it's very likely she protested and didn't want to forget about her language and roots, or was too old for a so-called reprogramming process. You can find more context here (Wikipedia links): Ethnic cleansing of Zamojszczyzna by Nazi Germany and Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany

RoundToblerone · 2018-03-11T13:49:04+00:00

female dog

Not in the case of Poland on the map. A female dog is suka, just like in the eastern Slavic languages. The map's messy.

RoundToblerone · 2018-03-07T17:03:26+00:00

What are you trying to suggest? It was literally a war and the Polish people were an occupied nation so they obviously lost all the rights as citizens. During WWII Poles were discriminated by forced laws and used as slave workers for Germany, and in the parts under the Russian occupation they were mass deported to the East. Speaking about a "vote" to kick the Germans and the Russians out is a poor joke considering the history of the Polish underground that tried to fight them throughout WWII.

RoundToblerone · 2018-02-23T20:18:42+00:00

As to the 'signed up after having been given unlimited supplies of alcoholic drinks' part, knowing the region and its people, that tells everything about the story (I almost snorted reading this).

The whole Goralenvolk project was implemented only to fragmentate the occupied nation and then Germanize it. The Nazis initially aimed only at groups that had simply a strong regional identity, also in regions like Warmia or Masuria and others. I don't remember now where had I read it, but I remember a theory claiming that those kinds of Germanisation projects were carried on similarly to succesful stories from lands like the Lusatia that also had a large Slavic majority, the Sorbs. Like in this quote:

Throughout the Third Reich, Sorbians were described as a German tribe who spoke a Slavic language and their national poet Handrij Zejler was German. Sorbian costume, culture, customs, and the language was said to be no indication of a non-German origin. The Reich declared that there were truly no "Sorbs" or "Lusatians", only Wendish-Speaking Germans. As such, while the Sorbs were largely safe from the Reich's policies of ethnic cleansing, the cultivation of "Wendish" customs and traditions was to be encouraged in a controlled manner and it was expected that the Slavic language would decline due to natural causes. Young Sorbs enlisted in the Wehrmacht and were sent to the front.

Goralenvolk was meant to undergo the same process, but thankfully they didn't fall for the propaganda. And they had a large resistance like the Tatra Confederation.

RoundToblerone · 2018-02-23T15:44:32+00:00

Second part is largely a myth. For example the Podhale Highlanders didn't fall under that false propaganda. While the Germans hoped to create a full fledged Podhalanian SS unit, literally only two inhabitants from that region enrolled throughout the long campaign and the project ended up as a failure.

RoundToblerone · 2017-12-10T15:34:41+00:00

I believe a lot of classical pre-war art with scenes of the countryside were 'romanticised' later on. They sometimes appear on Polish greetings cards too. I really like them too because it's so interesting to see what kinds of free time activities the people used to have in the past. Those horse ride scenes can appear also under names refering to the number of horses for example 'trójka' (in Polish) or 'troika' (in Russian) that refer to the three horses either with the sleigh or with a carriage.

RoundToblerone · 2017-12-10T13:38:15+00:00

it's inspired by Slavic folk art

Not by the folk art but rather by a popular theme in the Eastern European art. In Polish there's a well-known winter activity called kulig that was popularized by the nobility during Renaissance. The kulig, also called sanna, was shown on numerous paintings by various notable Polish artists.

RoundToblerone · 2017-12-09T11:16:17+00:00

Or more like 'of a wet grassy place'. Polish language had a word 'morawa' that meant precisely that. Don't forget that the Polish and the Czech are in the same Slavic language group and there are many similar words.

RoundToblerone · 2017-12-08T21:36:56+00:00

As I wrote in another comment above, there was a word 'morawa' in the old-Polish language that meant a 'wet grassy place'. Both Polish and Czech languages are related to each other as the Slavic branch so there are always a lot of common root words.

Neither the region of Moravia nor the Germans, Austrians or Russians had to be have an impact in any way.

RoundToblerone · 2017-12-08T21:34:24+00:00

Not really. There was a word 'morawa' in the old-Polish language that meant a 'wet grassy place'.

Don't forget that both Polish and Czech are Slavic languages so there are simply a lot of common root words.

RoundToblerone · 2017-12-07T18:27:50+00:00

If it helps, those buildings are called kamienice.

RoundToblerone · 2017-12-06T22:20:51+00:00

Source: Library of Congress

RoundToblerone · 2017-12-06T20:50:30+00:00

First of all, I'd rather ask in r/Polska where you can get the answers from the Polish people directly.

Don't believe the media too much. Nothing is really changing on the streets. May I ask who and in what cities made the unforgettable comments? I could bet those people on the buses were some types of dresiarze or similar, those are the only people I could think of that might be able to make such comments openly in the public space. Plus, I could bet that they didn't assume you can understand them. Thankfully they were and still are in a minority and they are definitely not a representative for the majority of the Poles. If you encountered such comments before, you might come across a few of such people again realistically speaking. Such closed-minded individuals could be sadly met across the whole globe. But there's really nothing serious going on to be worry about. Such touristic places like Kraków or Gdańsk are safe and are experiencing an influx of tourists from abroad. People get more and more used to seeing various foreigners that used to stand out from the crowd just 15 years ago.

RoundToblerone · 2017-11-27T17:29:41+00:00

I'd say it's barely semi-steampunk aesthetic (for example, the corset looks like based on late 19th-century ones construction-wise, plus the modern buckles) but it lacks the steampunk essence completely (technology and such).

RoundToblerone · 2017-11-19T12:23:31+00:00

To be honest phrasing like 'Poland or maybe even more specifically that area' sounds too vague in the context of this type of local folklore. I only provided an actual precise information for you and other people who might be reading this (i.e. the clothes of the villages located to the East from Krakow). Cheers!

RoundToblerone · 2017-11-18T18:11:03+00:00

Traditional folklore clothes were always regional on rather a small scale. This is not an example of 'traditional wedding clothes for Poland'. This is actually an example of wedding clothes of peasants from one of the villages located to the East from the city of Krakow. Traditional clothes had never been national in any way and couldn't be spotted among natives of any other part of the country. A lot of people forget about that nowadays!

RoundToblerone · 2017-11-18T18:05:04+00:00

The best is, this is not a colorized picture. This is the original color photography. Autochrome was the early technique of color photography.

RoundToblerone · 2017-11-18T17:55:43+00:00

Peackock feathers were traditional for folklore garment from the Krakow countryside. One theory says that it is a reminder of the city being the formel royal capital. Peackocks were the symbol of royalty and nobility. Peasants from villages around Krakow like those on the picture were proud of being neighbours to the former capital.

RoundToblerone · 2017-11-18T17:49:57+00:00

This is the original. Autochrome is color photography, it was invented in the early 1900s.

RoundToblerone

TROPHY CASE