Polish Culture

Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Firstly, I wanna introduce myself to you. For those of you who don't know me, My name is Halil Ibrahim AVCI. I`m studying at Mechanical Engineering Department.

Besides these I joined the Erasmus program last year. I was in Poland. On the other hand, I joined the training mobility so I decided to introduce Polish culture in this event.

If you are ready, I can start it.

First of all, Let’s talk about where is the Poland?

The Republic of Poland is the largest and most populous country in Central Eastern Europe. Russia takes place in the east of Poland, Czech Republic takes place in the south of Poland, Germany takes place in the west of Poland and they have Baltic Sea in the north. The ottomans called ``Lehistan`` in the past.

Let's continue with the second subject. I wanna talk about history of Poland shortly.

The Russians and Germans occupied the Poland throughout the Poland`s history. They killed lots of people. Especially, lots of people were killed in the term of Nazi Germany by leader Adolf Hitler. He built concentration camps to kill them in the Poland.

I visited lots of them. In these camps, there are gas chambers, combustion chambers, some rooms to torture the people. The entrances of these camps, there is a big ash hill in generally. It means that these ashes are coming from dead people. The Auswitch is the biggest one. It has a sentence in the entrance. ARBEIT MACHT FREI in German. It means working sets you free. There are lots of museums inside these camps. I want to read two poetries that I saw in Auswitch

I am one of the survivors of a concentration camp.

My eyes saw what nobody should see ever.

Gas chambers built by well-trained and cultivated engineers, children poisoned by well-trained doctors, babies dying of nurses who are well-trained, high school and college graduates.

For this reason, I doubt it.

I want you to notice that:

Make an effort for your students to be human. Your efforts are to produce knowledgeable monsters and resourceful psychopaths. If reading and writing, mathematics, helps your children become more people then it is important ...

In addition, He is a teacher in Germany right now.

The other one is belong to Anne Frank. She is one of the children that was killed in the Auswitch. In the Netherlands, she's been hiding from Nazi Germany for many years in a house. Nowadays, this house using as a museum. You can visit it in Amsterdam. She says

I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness;

I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too.

I feel the suffering of millions.

 And yet, when I look up at the sky,

I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

Anne Frank, Diary,15 July 1944

We respect all of them and God bless them.

If we back the main subject, I wanna mention about Adampol.Adampol is a city in Istanbul. It is called Polonezkoy in Turkish. It was created by polish people that escape from Poland. It still has polish people and polish houses. In some of the parts of this city, they keep alive the polish culture.

The third subject is religion.

Poland is the most pious country in Europe. A large part of the Polish population is Catholic. Pope Second John Paul , the current leader of the Christian world, is Polish. In Poland, there are about 5,000 Tatars, Muslims living. From the year of 1989 there are new Muslim groups. In Poland, this is not a problem.

Let's talk a little Polish cuisine

Especially internationally popular dish of Polish cuisine, Pierogi. Pierogi, which comes from the Ottoman cuisine and resembles Piruhi, which is still cheaper in various parts of Anatolia, is a kind of ravioli-like ravioli which is sometimes filled with spicy and sometimes sweet materials. This ravioli, which can also be cooked as fried, is made with meat, potatoes, cabbage or apples.

The other matter is Economy

Poland uses Zloty as its currency. A zloty is 100 groszy. The per capita national income is above $ 7,200.

The last part of my conversation is travelling to Poland

If you think that going to Poland in the future, you will be enjoyable with it. You can visit everywhere with old trains and when you are doing this, you can see lots of animals like grouse, deer, rabbit exc. If you are planning to go to summer holiday, don’t think about it anymore because the seas are always cold in the Poland. Lastly, if you want to take present for your familiars, the best gift is amber. It is called bursztyn in Poland.

Thank you for listening to me.

With all respect