"Polishness" - the story of Norman Davies about General Anders and his Army
In the interview with Professor Norman Davies conducted by Dr Odrowąż - Coates he says why he was interested in writing in his new book "Trail of Hope" (Szlak nadziei) about Anders Army. The main reason was because Anders had his own definition of Polishness, which is very different from the one that prevails today.
Professor Davies reports that Anders was German in origin and not a catholic. In fact he was from the protestant family. He accepted catholicism in Uzbekistan for political reasons. His views in many areas were similar to the ones of Piłsudki, who thought that Polish citizens of any ethnic background - Jews, Ukrainians, Tatars, Lithuenians etc. are Polish because of the citizenship itself and absolutely rejected the idea of Polish-Catholic.
Beacause of that views he had a great battle to include all Polish citizens in his forming in the USSR army. The NKVD tried to force him that only ethnic Poles joined the army. Whereas, Anders insisted that every Polish citizen, irrespectively of whether he could speak Polish or if he was a Catholic or whatever his ethnic background, his political affiliations, everybody qualified to join the army. There was a large number of Jews and one of the big myths, which is quite false, is that Anders wasn’t allowing Jews to join the army.
According to the research of Professor Davies, after the war, in London, Anders was again constantly attacked by Polish nationalists (National Democracy – ‘Endecy’), who wrote all the time: “General Anders is not a Pole”. He took them to an English court and he won his case. These critics were fined for libel, which meant a great deal for him.
It's good to remember that, especially nowdays when some Poles, unfortunately start to think of Polishness as being confined to Polish Catholics only - Professor Davies concludes.
P.S. The whole interview you can find here:
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