The Refugees at the Border

Poland was a remarkable country. Some loved it so dearly that, even after it had been dead for centuries, they still wanted to raise it from the grave.

Others hated it just as fiercely, wishing that the noble lords would never return and that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth would never rise again.

We've all heard of Chopin, who asked for his heart to be carried back to his homeland, and Marie Curie, who entrusted her boundless homesickness to the new element polonium.

Paderewski, the Polish politician most admired by Americans, performed for President Wilson at the White House to celebrate the victory of World War I.

As the war's greatest beneficiary, the United States naturally had plenty to celebrate. Yet amid all the cheers, a pianist played while weeping.

By chance, the "kind" American president, Wilson, noticed the scene. When he asked about it, he discovered that the man was Polish.

Then the "kind" American president, Wilson, was moved, and the two politicians settled on the "Fourteen Points" for the destruction of Europe right there.

A political spectacle made two presidents and the birth of a new hegemon, while moving countless people in later generations. Truly "a stirring and tearjerking tale"!

Setting that aside, there were plenty of opponents of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in nineteenth-century Poland. We'll leave aside the Jews and Gypsies, who were unwelcome wherever they went, and speak only of the relationship between the Polish nobility and common people: it was already as bitter as fire and water.

When people spoke of Poland, they thought of its famous absolute democracy. This had directly led to a situation where Russian troops could already be marching in, while the king's orders had yet to make it out of Warsaw.

In reality, however, these democratic rights did not belong to ordinary