Radio Polonia, Poland
Aug. 18, 2006
A turn for the worse
German-Polish relations turn sourer still; Ukrainians working without
a permit in Poland; and illegal betting on the internet are just some
of the stories in the Polish current affairs magazines.
Reviewed by Krysia Kolsowska
18.08.06
"A turn for the worse", writes Solidarnosc, a weekly of the
Solidarity trade union, commenting on the current state of
Polish-German relations. They took another plunge recently over an
exhibition mounted in Berlin about expulsions in the 20th century.
Poland argues that the exhibition puts an equality mark between the
suffering of Armenians or ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and
post-war deportations of Germans from Eastern Europe under the
decisions of the allied powers.
This is an offense to Poles, victims of the war started by Germany.
If such false analogies gain an official status, then the Germans
themselves will not be able to understand the horror of the last war,
says Solidarnosc. Erica Steinbach, president of the German expellees
union, is entering the center of German politics. The exhibition
sponsored by her organization was mounted in a prestigious place and
its opening was graced by many leading German personalities. This is
why Poles are alarmed. A spirit of historical manipulation has been
revived, something which should worry German people most. That was
Solidarnosc.
The weekly Polityka writes that a day after Erica Steinbach opened
the exhibition about expulsions, renowned German writer and Nobel
literary prize winner Guenter Grass revealed that he had served in
notorious Waffen SS units towards the end of the war. The weekly
recalls that five years ago, Grass published a novel on how the
Soviets sunk a ship evacuating Germans trapped by the Red Army in
East Prussia, killing over 9 thousand of its passengers, more than a
half of them children. By doing this he drew attention to the tragedy
of German refugees.
Now he is giving a clear signal to the Germans that they should stop
pretending: don’t cheat ourselves now that we are old, because at a
young age the majority of us believed in Nazism and had some share in
it. But the weekly writes also that without Polish-German dialogue
our mutual neighbourhood is threatened by provincial egocentrism and
the loss of empathy with neighbouring nations.
Newsweek reports that as many as 100,000 people from non-EU Ukraine
may be working in Poland without a permit. Only about 3 thousand are
employed legally. This will soon change, Poland’s labor ministry
plans to issue a regulation in the autumn enabling citizens of
neighbouring countries to work legally in this country. Today
Ukrainians who come to Poland find employment as manual workers.
Women, who may be teachers, nurses or accountants back home, work as
cleaners, child minders and cooks. Men usually work at construction
sites.
Their earnings are poor and cases of cheating by employers are not
that rare. Analysts sound an alarm that the Polish economy badly
needs immigrant labor today. Cheap workers from the East will fill a
gap on the market and contribute taxes to state coffers. Perhaps the
best example for Poland should be the economic boom experienced by
Ireland in the past decade also thanks to immigrant workers, Newsweek
points out.
Wprost publishes the list of Poland’s fifty richest politicians,
which is opened by 42 year old Janusz Palikot, a deputy of the
opposition liberal Civic Platform who declared to be worth 330
million zlotys. Palikot became involved in politics already as a very
wealthy man.
He became millionaire in the 90s, starting with production of wooden
cases for transporting alcohol and then moving on to alcohol
production. A completely different approach is represented by his
party colleague and now deputy to the European Parliament, Pawel
Piskorski. He was elected MP at the age of 23, even before graduating
from university. He made 1.7 million zlotys during his political
career, drawing many a suspicious look even from his party
colleagues.
Polish politicians, writes Wprost, tend to regard income statements
as a necessary evil, whereas revealing assets could be beneficial for
their political careers. People would perhaps be more willing to vote
for politicians who can prove what the sources of their income are,
than those who talk all the time about how little they own, says
Wprost.
Though it is illegal in Poland, around 200,000 Poles visit bookmakers
on the web, writes the weekly Przekroj reporting on studies conducted
by the Inter-active Market Research Institute. During the world
soccer championships, the number of Poles making bets through the net
rose more than 120 percent. Bookmakers admit unofficially that their
profits in Poland are smaller than in other countries because Poles
tend to win more often than representatives of other nations.