Word: polishing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...POLISH THEATRE Grey Friday...
World War II began last week at 5:20 a. m. (Polish time) Friday, September 1, when a German bombing plane dropped a projectile on Puck, fishing village and air base in the armpit of the Hel Peninsula. At 5:45 a. m. the German training ship Schleswig-Holstein lying off Danzig fired what was believed to be the first shell: a direct hit on the Polish underground ammunition dump at Westerplatte. It was a grey day, with gentle rain...
...every city of any importance the length & breadth of Poland. They aimed at air bases, fortifications, bridges, railroad lines and stations, but in the process they killed upward of 1,500 noncombatants. The Nazi ships were mostly big Heinkels, unaccompanied by pursuit escorts. Germany admitted losing 21 planes to Polish counterattack by pursuits and antiaircraft...
Poland is scarcely more convincing as history than it is as fiction. Oversimplifications and omissions abound. Clearly, the research received from the local authorities suffers from the twin failings of modern Polish historiography: Communist rewriting of history and nationalist bias. Michener all but ignores the division of Poland between Stalin and Hitler in 1939. And he does not mention the Nazi slaughter of Polish underground forces and civilians during the 1944 Warsaw uprising, as the Red Army stood by across the river from the capital...
Another gap in the record seems to have been designed to cosmeticize Polish antiSemitism. The country's once vast Jewish community is neglected, except for brief mentions that downgrade its economic and cultural contributions. Jews are usually characterized as moneylenders or itinerant musicians, although they were the bulwark of the country's middle class during the 16th and part of the 17th centuries. The harsh restrictions on Jews and the frequent pogroms from the mid-17th century onward are summarized in four words: "Animosities did sometimes flare." Allowances are made for a German SS officer: "In his favor...