Europe and Poland

There is one experience which Americans as a nation fortunately (or unfortunately, insofar as it affects their understanding of the Polish situation) have not had, and that is knowing what it means to be a hostage in the power of a brute. The United States (where I have spent a grand total of 16 years) is not a very complex country: its moral and political issues are quite clear-cut. In this respect the contrast with Europe could not be greater. Here, there are simply too many races, nations, classes, traditions, loyalties, ideologies, parties, historical memories, and economic interests involved. Plurality and variety a, the keynote of Europe.

Consequently, all of our history is marked by dilemmas, some of which are apparently insoluble. This is true especially in the totalitarian tyrannies, whether in the West, or in the East. There were card-carrying Nazis who actively rendered aid to persecuted men and women; and there were genuine enemies of Nazism who had neither courage nor pity and looked the other way if asked for help. Analogous situations are to be found in the Communist East, so we must beware of thinking in clichés. Communists, as National Socialists, because they are human beings, are not all of a piece.

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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There is one experience which Americans as a nation fortunately (or unfortunately, insofar as it affects their understanding of the Polish situation) have not had, and that is knowing what it means to be a hostage in the power of a brute. The United States (where I have spent a grand total of 16 years) is not a very complex country: its moral and political issues are quite clear-cut. In this respect the contrast with Europe could not be greater. Here, there are simply too many races, nations, classes, traditions, loyalties, ideologies, parties, historical memories, and economic interests involved. Plurality and variety a, the keynote of Europe.

Consequently, all of our history is marked by dilemmas, some of which are apparently insoluble. This is true especially in the totalitarian tyrannies, whether in the West, or in the East. There were card-carrying Nazis who actively rendered aid to persecuted men and women; and there were genuine enemies of Nazism who had neither courage nor pity and looked the other way if asked for help. Analogous situations are to be found in the Communist East, so we must beware of thinking in clichés. Communists, as National Socialists, because they are human beings, are not all of a piece.