Comment on the obituary of Flight Lieutenant Dennis Bryden pilot shot down in 1944 […] in the Telegraph 11 November 2021. “Bryden […] and his crew took off from Brindisi on the night of September 10 1944 to drop supplies to the Polish underground movement in Warsaw.” ‘Movement’?! This sentence is a serious distortion. On … Read more
Comment on the article Vladimir Putin bans comparisons between Soviets and Nazi Germany in Second World War by Tom Parfitt in The Times, 1 July 2021. ‘The latter is likely to anger former Soviet states like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which say they were occupied by the Red Army and then coerced into joining the … Read more
Polish version: Film BBC Pożyczone Pastwisko z 1960 The men in the BBC documentary Borrowed Pasture, Eugeniusz Okołowicz, photographer, and Włodzimierz Bułaj, electrician, were in the Polish Army during September 1939 campaign of WWII, then crossed into Lithuania where they were interned, to avoid capture by either Germans or Russians. Soviets occupied Lithuania in Spring … Read more
Comment on an opinion piece 76 years on, Belsen’s lessons are more important than ever by Karen Pollock in The Times, April 15 2021. ‘During the Second World War, a generation of young people across Europe were conscripted to fight for their country. For six long years, these mainly young men were separated from their … Read more
Comment to the article Stalin’s War by Sean McMeekin, review — a different way to look at WWII by Dominic Sandbrook in The Sunday Times, 21 March 2021. ‘[WWII] didn’t begin in September 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland, but eight years earlier with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. It didn’t end in the summer of … Read more
Comment on the article ‘Plunder,’ a Gripping Reflection on What the Nazis Took and What It Would Mean to Take It Back, review of Menachem Kaiser’s book. Dwight Garner in The New York Times, March 8, 2021. I hope Kaiser recovers his family property. I am very familiar with ‘Kafkaesque hurdles’ in Poland. You need … Read more
My comment on the article Poland tries to extradite woman, 97, on SS charge by Oliver Moody and Maria Wilczek in The Times, 1 January 2021. There is an article in the same World section of today’s Times about removal of a kneeling slave memorial from Boston in the US, illustrated by a picture of … Read more
Comment on the article Regimes have learnt not to fear street protests, by Roger Boyes in The Times, 27 October 2020. Polish version: Mity i fantazje w The Times. “The democratic uprising that I accompanied most closely, the rise, fall and rise again of Solidarity in the Poland of the 1980s and 1990s, still has … Read more
Mój komentarz do artykułu Exploring Poland’s Lake District, Emma Thomson, The Sunday Times, 27 września 2020. Tekst oryginału po angielsku: Communist narrative in The Sunday Times Travel section. Artykuł reprezentuje narrację komunistyczną. Mieszkańcy regionu jezior mazurskich uciekli przed wojskiem komunistycznym Związku Radzieckiego lub zostali wypędzeni później w akcji totalitarnej czystki. Praktycznie cała populacja dużego regionu … Read more
My comment on Hitler and Stalin by Laurence Rees review: a tale of two tyrants by Robert Gerwarth in The Telegraph, 26 October 2020. Polish version: Neuronalne korelaty świadomości. WWII and associated developments are typically viewed from mostly a military perspective. Started on [date], ended on [date]. [number] mln killed. My family comes from eastern … Read more
My second comment on Hitler and Stalin by Laurence Rees review by David Aaronovitch in The Times, 23 October 2020. Polish version: Druga wojna światowa zredukowana do karykatury. 26 October 2020 I would like to return to the second paragraph of the review, on which I commented already earlier. The entire article is based on … Read more
My comment on Hitler and Stalin by Laurence Rees review — bloody fantasy versus cruel rationalism, book review by David Aaronovitch in The Times, 23 October 2020. Polish version: Komunistyczna narracja drugiej wojny światowej w The Times. This review starts with a caricature and is a bit of a caricature of history itself. It is … Read more
My comment on the article Auschwitz museum chief offers to serve Nigerian boy Omar Farouq’s hard-labour sentence by Jane Flanagan in The Times, 30 September 2020. Mr Cywiński is more of a political functionary than a museum director. Here is part of my comment following the The Sunday Times article Holocaust novelists blur Nazi fact … Read more
My comment on the article Exploring Poland’s Lake District by Emma Thomson in The Sunday Times, 27 September 2020. Polish version: Narracja komunistyczna w The Sunday Times. The article is representative of the Communist narrative. This is a region whose inhabitants either escaped or were expelled later in a totalitarian action. Practically the entire population … Read more
My comment on the article Exploring Poland’s Lake District by Emma Thomson in The Sunday Times, 27 September 2020. The article is representative of the Communist narrative. This is a region whose inhabitants either fled or were expelled later in a totalitarian action. Practically the entire population of this large region was purged. The region … Read more
My comments on the article We need to talk about empire: a conversation about Britain’s history is overdue by Matthew Syed in The Sunday Times, 14 June 2020. Imperialism has many aspects and is not limited to race relations. The imperial view still permeates the world politics. The current world order is an outcome of … Read more
Comment on The Times article We led the war effort, say British — others disagree by Lucy Fisher, May 8, 2020 The poll is asking the wrong questions. The UK and the US allied with one of the two genocidal regimes in Europe against the other one. Collectively, they succeeded in defeating one enemy, while … Read more
Comment following The Times article Airman held hostage by the Soviets missed VE Day celebrations by Mark Bridge, 8 May 2020. On this day 75 years ago, my father Bolesław Borkowski was imprisoned by the Soviet NKVD in the citadel in Brześć (Brest) on the river Bug. The Soviets tortured Polish prisoners. At night, those sitting … Read more
On February 23, 2020, The Sunday Times published an article by Andrew Holgate Holocaust novelists blur Nazi fact and fiction in bestsellers. Here is my comment. Quote from the article: In one of the novel’s most important scenes, the number he tattoos on the arm of his future wife is seen by several critics as … Read more
Second comment on the article The Volunteer: Jack Fairweather’s Auschwitz spy thriller wins Costa prize, by David Sanderson, The Times, January 29 2020. I should add that the first book presenting Witold Pilecki’s role was Fighting Auschwitz: the Resistance in the Concentration Camp by Józef Garlinski (1913-2005), Polish officer who was also imprisoned in Auschwitz. … Read more