1945 Yalta

And another comment following The Times article We can never be sure we’d be the good guys by David Aaronovitch, January 1, 2020.


Lech Borkowski 2 January 2020

It is useful to remember the disastrous 1945 Yalta deal made between the democratic and freedom-loving leaders of Great Britain and United States with the genocidal Communist regime of the Soviet Union. It did not cause a great distress to Churchill and Roosevelt or to their compatriots to sign this pact with the devil himself. The deal facilitated Communist genocidal activities in Central and Eastern Europe.

My parents and grandparents were denied their Polish citizenship, evicted from their property, imprisoned in concentration camps, while the Polish forces serving the legal Polish government in exile in London, those who fought with the Allies on the western front were denied participation in the 1946 Victory Parade in London.

Herein lies part of the answer to questions posed in the article. It is not so hard to sacrifice Others. One day the Other is the person in another country, then the Other may be someone ethnically different from you in the same country, finally the Other is your neighbour. As the evil encroaches, so does grow the otherness of people you know. One day you learn, as I had a chance recently, that to your best mates from high school you are the Other.

@LechSBorkowski