Originally written by Liliana Boladz-Nekipelov on May 22, 2009 6:02 PM ...all I found was some unusual words and curses ... etc.

Maybe you came across the respectable genre called reportaż which has a very strong tradition in Poland. I never have the time to really savor those because of their length but that's what they are about: putting you in touch with real life as it is in people's houses, streets, etc. You can be bewildered or shocked, but that's what real life looks like. Considering that we owe to those reporters our knowledge of a reality we may never directly experience, I think we should be grateful.

I started reading the paper and I found that somebody bought a ruski chodzik, I had no idea what he was talking about, then the coal mine where some accident happenedt was called k...ska, mezczyzni were called faceci. It is good: it is all perfect but not for a respectable Polish paper, maybe for Yellow Press or some more entertaining media.  Then something like kiss my a....

Liliana (and I will close this parenthesis here), faceci meaning 'guys' is a word that you hear all the time in its country of origin. And the art of reportaż in the sense I mean it is cultivated by the most respectable papers. Note the English language service of Gazeta Wyborcza for your peace of mind: http://wyborcza.pl/0,86871.html

Originally written by Jacek K. on May 22, 2009 11:47 AM  As for Janusz Korczak Wikipedia says that he was a Polish-Jewish author, while Julian Tuwim was "one of the greatest Polish poets." We do have to be pigeonholed somehow...

Do we?

OK. Korczak didn`t save the children and he perished together with them. From the practical point of view, he should have taken the chance offered to him. He didn`t. I like to think I`m a practical person, yet I`m afraid I`d do the same in the same conditions, because you just don`t desert those that are entrusted to you or dependent on you. Was what he did Jewish? or Polish? Or just human? Or just silly, perhaps?

You know, it was me that translated the last part of his "Pamiętnik". Documentary, yet better than some fiction, simple yet painful...

Originally written by Liliana Boladz-Nekipelov on May 22, 2009 11:30 AM  be whatever he would like to be himself, a Pole, a Polish Jew, a Jew, a Jewish Pole just a human being, a cosmopolitan being

That`s how it should be. A pity it is not.