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Introduction to My Life Story

My Life.
From My Own Perspective.

Introduction

I am not writing this out of a sense of self-importance, nor out of a sudden urge to publicly bare my private life. I have decided to recount a few key experiences, using them as a springboard to address a much broader issue. It is an issue that in Poland is still swept under the rug or treated with an alarming level of indulgence, yet it is intimately tied to what we call the Polish mentality.

I have no desire to be pigeonholed as a "critic of Polishness." First of all, I dislike generalizations. Secondly, I have many wonderful friends among Poles. And thirdly, I consider myself largely Polish.

However, I have spent my entire life interacting with many different nations and years integrating into various countries. This gives me a certain distance, allowing me to observe phenomena that are far more intense and destructive within Polish communities than anywhere else.

Working in Poland for many years, I lived a very good life up to a certain point. I had a multitude of appreciative clients and earned a very good income. However, this was accompanied by relentless hate, jealousy, envy, and constant attacks that I had to learn to endure or simply ignore. Today, looking back from the distance of Cambodia, I judge it much more harshly. I realized that material comfort and a high standard of living were not worth the price I paid: years of humiliation, degradation, and constant witch hunts.

I refuse to play the victim—I never felt comfortable in that role and always avoided it. However, I am fully aware that a high standard of living and success achieved without self-promotion do not make up for hatred and aggression. Moreover, I realize that I was no exception. Other Poles—celebrities, artists, or simply public figures—arouse the exact same hate and hostility among their compatriots.

The fact that I am not alone in this does not comfort me in the slightest, nor does it legitimize these destructive behaviors in any way. On the contrary, it makes me feel an even greater need to describe these events from my own, subjective perspective.

I hope that this subjectivity will expose a certain objective mechanism. I have noticed that many people approach this topic either defensively (claiming that "I'm just nitpicking") or with the false conviction that "it's the exact same everywhere in the world."

Let me be clear: it is simply not true.

The Polish mentality, in this regard, is a global anomaly. And it needs to be written about not because it hurt Piotr Tymochowicz or ruined his parents' lives, but because it primarily destroys Poles themselves.

🧱 First Fragments of Memory: Life Behind the Wall and the Polish "Third World"

I was born in Warsaw as an only child. My mother was a geographer specializing in international relations, and my father was a nuclear chemist at the Institute for Nuclear Research in Świerk. I was incredibly fortunate, as they were both brilliant, loving, and deeply patriotic people.

However, for the first few years of my life, my parents were separated. I lived with my mother in East Berlin (the capital of the GDR), while my father worked in West Berlin. The borders were closed, and we couldn't visit each other.

My earliest memories are of Berlin. As far back as I can remember, it was my city—the places I strongly identified with as a child.

I attended first and second grade on Fischerinsel, and then moved to a school on Andreasstraße, close to the city center. My mother worked at the Polish Institute of Culture, so she made sure I attended a Polish school twice a week.

But it was the East German public school that shaped me the most. I remember the sheer exoticism of that system and its heavy propaganda machinery.

What did I do during those mandatory 30-minute morning assemblies that started every day at 7:30 AM? I simply slept in. And when I was already at school and just wanted to get home faster, I would ostentatiously wait on a bench, far away from the hustle of the assembly, in my own independent little world.

The sheer artificiality and pomposity of the Young Pioneer celebrations amused me. I didn't join the Pioneers, and I didn't take part in party ceremonies. I felt like a rebel. The school frequently complained to the embassy to get me or my mother in line, but fortunately, my nonconformity was tolerated without any harsh reprisals.

It was a fascinating period of German duality. As students, we were encouraged to snitch on and spy on our own parents—checking, for example, if they were watching banned Western television.

That was when the image of two parallel worlds formed in my mind. One was the forbidden world where my father worked—a colorful world of freedom. The other was the drab but optimistic, emerging world of a new Germany.

I remember climbing the surrounding hills with my friends to gaze at the inaccessible world of the "decaying West," which shimmered in the distance with the rainbow colors of neon advertisements. Sometimes we would stand there in complete silence for almost an hour. I remember one friend whispering, "Someday, I'm going to live there."

The border was like an Event Horizon to me—something you could only reach with your imagination. That world held secrets: secret tunnels, Hitler’s flooded bunker, and the "ghost stations" of the subway that led to the West.

At some point, however, we managed to get a pass to the West through a family reunification program.

Suddenly, a completely different world opened up before me. We moved to the villa district of Wannsee, surrounded by lakes and forests. Formally, it was the American Sector. I was in for a culture shock at my new school, which was attended by both German and American kids. In stark contrast to the Eastern Bloc drill, the atmosphere was relaxed, built on partnership with the teachers, and filled with a genuine joy of learning.

Regardless, I still traveled to East Berlin twice a week for Polish school. I was constantly living at the intersection of parallel worlds within a single, divided city.

These were the 1970s. I remember when the border with Poland was opened and Poles started flocking to East Berlin in massive numbers. Aside from holidays and vacations, this was my only contact with my fellow countrymen.

And that’s when the culture clash hit me. To me, it was literally the "Third World."

Not just because of the material backwardness of the Polish People's Republic, but primarily because of their perception of time.

Whether in East or West Berlin, I was living in the local future. It was a world focused on building tomorrow, without constantly picking at the scabs of the past. I grew up among German and American peers who didn't identify with World War II in the slightest.

In Poland, and among the Poles visiting Germany, I felt like I was in a completely different temporal reality. It was as if the war had ended for them just a few weeks prior.

In the next episode, I will describe situations I witnessed firsthand—things that were never talked about in Poland, shamefully swept under the rug for all those years, and which probably very few people would believe today.

👇 Let me know in the comments—was your childhood also a clash of two different worlds? I invite you to join the discussion and follow the upcoming episodes.

#PRL #Berlin #ColdWar #Mentality #History #LifeAbroad #Memoir #Reflections #ThirdWorld #Distance

Part Two

Poles in the GDR… A Difficult TABOO Subject
(My Life – from my subjective point of view)

I remember that as a child, I experienced summer trips to Poland as journeys not just to a different place, but to a different time. I had the feeling of traveling back into the past.

As a child, I couldn't grasp the ennoblement of the working-peasant class, which I associated with the lowest social strata, illiteracy, subservience, and a certain belligerence bordering on quarrelsomeness. I didn't feel superior – I simply couldn't understand what value there was in elevating people to the heights of power without the necessary competence or education.

The drabness and greyness of the Polish People's Republic, combined with pervasive filth and shoddiness, were offset for me by the wonderful stories my grandparents told. Yet my real encounter with the widespread pathology of communist Poland paradoxically took place not in Poland itself, but in the heart of the GDR – in East Berlin.

Twice a week, I attended the Polish afternoon school at the embassy there. Often after classes, I would stay longer with my parents, and that's when I became an involuntary witness to the horrifying behavior of my fellow countrymen.

Of course, I don't like to generalize, but I remember how many times I wanted to sink into the ground with shame, watching the behavior of Poles who regularly came over after the border opened in the 1970s.

I know that to this day, there is a strong belief used to justify this behavior: after all, we were victims of the war, the aggressor was Germany, we were a poor and backward country, and in nearly every family, someone was killed by the Germans.

That is clear, and I have no intention of denying it. But Polish gangs of young thugs and grown men swaggering through Berlin, shouting "Heil Hitler!" and "Hände hoch!", spitting in young Germans' faces, hurling abuse at children, and staging drunken brawls – that built neither friendly feelings nor respect.

I remember how older Germans compared these Polish groups to the Soviet soldiers from thirty years earlier.

I lived in a world that wasn't living in the war but was trying to build a new future. I was raised with the conviction that collective responsibility must never be endorsed. What is a child guilty of, just for being born twenty years after the war in a particular country? That was obvious to me.

I witnessed specific scenes that I can still see before my eyes to this day:

Public urination and defecation in the subway – on the station platform – by drunken young thugs from Poland.

Humiliating Germans of all ages, practically torturing them in the street.

An attempted gang rape of a girl who was maybe twelve or thirteen years old, after she had been forced to strip naked.

Drunken abuse, spitting in faces, beatings in the street – not only against older people, but also against very young people and children.

I don't know why it was mainly the pathological element that flocked to Berlin, but from my mother's accounts, I know that debates took place at the highest levels about whether it might be better to close the border between the supposedly fraternal countries once again. I believed her, because I saw it with my own eyes. She, as a great Polish patriot, was also deeply affected by all of it.

That was when, as a child, I started to be afraid. Not of Germans, not of Americans. I was afraid of my own countrymen in East Berlin.

I already knew then that no war from thirty years ago could justify this. I couldn't understand the sluggishness of the GDR police – as if they were afraid of upsetting party dignitaries by acting against the "fraternal nation." I saw how Germans endured it with humility, with a constant sense of guilt for the actions of their ancestors. I never saw any retaliatory reaction from them.

And I was dying of fear and shame. It happened that abusive curses were hurled in my direction, people thinking I was German.

That was also the time of massive Polish "raids" on grocery stores and shoe shops, where people would buy 100 or even several hundred pairs of shoes in a single trip. Aggressive, impatient lines would form, from which Germans were forcibly thrown out – as "Gestapo men."

I never saw one Pole call another to order. There was clearly total permission for these disgraceful behaviors.

It stuck in my memory because these weren't occasional outbursts. I saw such scenes almost every time.

Perhaps that's why, even as a child, I no longer shared the mindless adoration of my own nation. I increasingly identified with the humiliated Germans, especially when the abuse targeted young people or children.

I understand that this can't be attributed solely to individuals. It was a consequence of poverty, shortages, lack of education, and a life perpetually defined by a war that had ended over 30 years earlier. But is that a sufficient reason to fully excuse one's countrymen? Does the fact that Poles suffered more than other Europeans explain such behavior by guests in a new geopolitical situation?

That doesn't convince me.

We came to the eastern part of Berlin less and less willingly. My attendance at the Polish school was cut down to one day a week – and even that seemed like too much to me.

I'll be honest – I don't feel entirely comfortable writing about all of this. I keep thinking that maybe I shouldn't, that it's the distant past, that many people today will accuse me of having bad intentions.

But that is exactly what the Truth was from my subjective point of view – whether anyone likes it or not.

I still believe, however, that the Truth we witnessed firsthand has far greater value – even if it is painful and uncomfortable – than any political or social correctness.

Please write to me in the comments – do you share my view? Do you think that things like this need to be talked about, even after all these years?

#History #PolishPeoplesRepublic #GDR #Berlin #Taboo #Mentality #Memory #Identity #Reflections #Truth