I had lunch the other day with Maciek, the Polish caregiver who looked after my dad at the end of his life. Maciek has a very limited grasp of the English language, and I have even less of Polish. Somehow, we are still able to communicate.
Maciek, who's in his late 50s, was reminiscing about his days as a sailor aboard a Polish submarine. On this one occasion, he said, the sub was pulling into a busy port in France. I assume it was for a refueling and some R&R for those on board. Sailors topside on the sub offered friendly nods to sailors on subs from other nations that had come into port. Poles waved to Americans, Americans waved to Russians, Russians waved to Poles. This camaraderie is common among servicemen, he said.
The exception is the relationship between the Poles and Germans. Old wounds are still open from WW II days. When the subs of those two nations passed each other in the port, the Polish sailors placed the tips of their first two fingers under their noses, representing nubs of a mustache on their upper lips, while crying out "Hilter! Hitler!" This upset the Germans, of course, who offered back clenched fists and expletives from their angry faces.
Maciek laughed as he related this story, acting it out as he went along, perhaps embarrassed by his foibles of youth. I laughed too, because the situation he described is funny, the fact that the young German sailors who weren't even born when Hitler was alive would have to wear the albatross around their necks in peace time, and that the young Polish sailors would not let them forget it.
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