Dave Barry, in his Travel book (Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need), says that if you park your tank at the border of Poland and forget to set your parking brake, you could wake up in the morning to discover you've conquered the country. That about sums up the history of Poland. They've been conquered and pillaged by all sorts of countries through the centuries.
The photo above is the monument to the defense of Warsaw against the Nazis in 1939. It wasn't just soldiers who fought, but farmers and workers as well, and they're represented in the monument. You can feel the weight of the cement on top crushing their resistence.
This war, World War II, is the last time Western Europe faced evil. Even then, France surrendered to the evil--no not every single French person, but the government did. So it shouldn't be a surprise to us that as we face evil in our time, most of Western Europe has forgotten what that means.
This monument in Warsaw is to commemorate all the Poles who were killed at the hands of the Soviets, beginning September 17, 1939 and continuing until the fall of the Soviet Union. The flowers were left on the monument just five days before we went there. Unlike France, Poland still remembers the results of evil. That's why they fight with us. They fight so we won't need another monument marking another victory for evil.
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