Word: polese
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
"There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess," Winston Churchill once remarked, "and there are few mistakes they have ever avoided." To an extraordinary degree, Lech Walesa embodies the Polish virtues of courage, faith, patriotism, spontaneity. But neither he, nor his lieutenants, nor the men who ruled the...
Lech Walesa had the overwhelming majority of the Polish people behind him, and to them he conveyed a compelling message of hope. The Poles will not forget?they never have. During Poland's 16-month awakening, the priests and parishioners of a church in central Warsaw used to sing together...
The national ideals that Walesa represents have their roots in more than 1,000 years of Polish history. "They are accustomed to liberty," wrote an anonymous Byzantine historian about the Slavs in the 6th or 7th century. Perhaps because they were so open to invasion by the Germans and the...
Poles have revolted countless times against their oppressors, only to fail heroically. Almost every generation of Poles for the past century and a half has risen in arms. This penchant for rebellion?evident again in Solidarity?prompted Karl Marx to call Poland the "thermometer of the intensity and vitality of...
Grand gestures and heroic sacrifices come naturally to the Poles, along with an alarming capacity for martyrdom. The 19th century playwright Stanislaw Wyspianski called long-suffering Poland "the Christ of nations" because of its capacity for anguish. Joseph Stalin is said to have remarked that bringing Communism to Poland was...