Secondary Poland Stories

Welcome to Poland!

We are a country located in the centre of Europe.

Poland's about four times the size of Scotland and has over 300

miles of coastline, of which over a half are beautiful beaches.

If only a swim in the Baltic Sea wasn't so refreshing!

Poland borders with seven different countries,

including Germany, Ukraine and the Czech Republic.

In this programme, we ask

how Poland's turbulent past has shaped the country...

and consider how Poland - so reliant on coal -

fits into the European Union's environmental plan.

Since Poland joined the EU in 2004,

the UK has seen a huge increase in Polish migrants.

Poland has a long tradition of Poles leaving to work abroad,

and currently there are 17 million Poles living outside the country.

That means that for every ten Polish people, four of them have emigrated.

Jacek Kunysz is one of the Poles who's made the hard decision

to leave Poland.

Together with his wife and son he is about to make the move to Britain.

The family live in a small flat on the outskirts of Warsaw.

It's a quarter to five in the morning and Jacek, his wife

and his son are about to depart for the UK.

Jacek and his family are joining the 643,000 Poles

who are currently living in the UK.

The Wierzbiccy family moved to Scotland in 2011 to start

a new life.

The family chose Glasgow as they already had Polish friends

who had found a job there.

So how many Poles actually live in Scotland?

Well, in 2011, there were 67,000 of them.

That is 1.25% of Scotland's total population.

The Polish community is now well established in Scotland

and there are more and more Polish shops opening, catering to

Polish and Scottish customers.

I think life is much easier here for us,

it was very hard in the beginning because of language

and different culture but everything can be possible...

And the weather, that is hard for us!

The weather is horrible!

The Polish community even has its own radio show in which

listeners can vote for their favourite Polish band.

All my life I dreamt about radio and a job as a DJ on the radio

and I'm glad I do something for Polish culture.

What has prompted this increase of Poles settling in the Britain?

With the average Polish salary of £635 a month, compared with

almost £2,000 in Britain, Poles find the UK an attractive destination.

When Poland joined the European Union it became

easier for Poles to move to the UK, and by 2011 the amount

of Poles here shot up to 643,000 -

an increase of 850%.

And it's not just for economic reasons people immigrate to

Scotland.

Three years ago, Pawel moved his family to Aberdeen to further

his career as a ship designer, but they have now returned to Poland.

We decided to move to Scotland, to Aberdeen, somewhere where is

the offshore market, where I could learn a lot of... just to

develop skills, to have more chance to talk with other people

and companies and to have an international environment.

Pawel's move to Scotland wasn't simply to get him

a higher wage - it was more about developing his career.

He also found he had a better work and life balance in Scotland,

allowing him to spend more time with his family.

His working hours in Poland are much longer.

My life in Scotland was much easier than in Poland,

you had much more time after work. In Poland, life is completely

different - sometimes I have to take work home, sometimes

I have to organise some jobs for me and it's harder.

When Pawel's children reached school age the family had a big

decision to make - whether to stay in Scotland permanently, or to

move back to Poland.

Our children needed to start school and then we had a choice -

our children start school in Scotland

and then we would be there for another ten years or something.

We spoke with our family and we all decided

it was the time to move back.

But the family don't regret the time they spent in Scotland as it

has improved Pawel's career prospects.

Poland is a very proud nation.

Us Poles are convinced that most Polish things

are the best in the world.

In a recent survey, Polish people were rated as the most attractive

compared to other Europeans.

Curiously, Poles were also found to be one of the most

unhappy people within Europe.

One of the reasons for that could lie in Poland's troubled past.

The Second World War started in Poland.

In September 1939, the Nazis invaded the country.

Adolf Hitler was obsessed with creating

a greater Germany for pure Germans only.

He aggressively pursued anyone who didn't fit into his plan -

he wanted to create an Aryan master race.

In order to achieve that, he specifically targeted

the Jewish population.

Most Jews were taken away from their homes and made to wear yellow stars.

They were sent to ghettos to separate them

and make them easier to control.

Rutka Laskier lived in one of these ghettos

and is often called the Polish Anne Frank.

She too wrote a diary about what it was like being a Jewish girl

under German occupation.

The ghettos were only a temporary solution - eventually most

Jewish people ended up in one of the infamous concentration camps.

The most well-known camp was Auschwitz, which is the German

name for Oswiecim, a little town in the south of Poland.

Malgorzata Jakubas is a 29-year-old political science student.

Her college building was originally part of the concentration camp.

Hitler vilified the Jews and blamed them for everything -

from the defeat of World War I to the Great Depression.

Many Jews were successful,

and people were looking for someone to blame for their troubles.

Hitler capitalised on this and the hatred

he directed at the Jews grew into what we now know as the Holocaust.

Malgorzata has chosen to specialise in the memory of the Holocaust

and human rights.

The extermination wasn't only limited to Jews.

Hitler and his Nazi party also targeted the mentally ill and the disabled.

Hitler thought of them as "unworthy of life."

Poland was under Nazi occupation for six years and during this time

nearly a quarter of the Polish population where killed.

Three million of them were Jewish.

This is where most Jews brought to Auschwitz ended up -

the gas chambers.

After they were made to strip off their clothes

they were gassed in their thousands and their bodies were burned.

Possibly the most harrowing display at Auschwitz is the hair which

was harvested from the dead bodies to be used to stuff mattresses.

A few months after Rutka wrote these lines

she was taken to Auschwitz and was tragically killed there.

The majority of Jews transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau

died in the gas chambers.

Most of them were killed within the hour

of arriving in this death factory.

For this group of Israeli Jews, visiting this place is a particularly

emotional experience.

I think every person should know it can happen everywhere,

all the time if people don't pay attention onto each other,

if people don't take care, if people don't see behind their shoulders

and just think for themselves - it can happen everywhere.

The end of the war in 1945 didn't mean

the end of occupation for Poland, though.

Russia imposed Communist rule and it remained like that until 1989 when

the Solidarity movement, led by Lech Walesa, forced democratic elections.

When Poland joined the European Union in 2004, it had

a lot of catching up to do. The economy needed to be rebuilt,

its education system and infrastructure needed major investment.

And as for the environment, Poland still has a way to go.

Poland produces 82% of its electricity from coal.

Much of that power -

around one-fifth of the country's electricity - is produced

from just one plant, Elektrownia Belchatow, in central Poland.

This huge power plant produces enough electricity to power

the whole of Scotland!

It is Europe's largest thermal power plant

and its biggest polluter.

According to the European Commission,

it emitted close to 32 million tonnes of CO2 in 2010.

Belchatow power station produces its electricity from coal

dug out from this huge open cast mine.

Piotr Dominiak is a journalist and passionate environmental campaigner.

Belchatow open cast mine

produces low quality brown coal for its power plant.

And this is Pniowek coal mine - a deep cast mine.

Its black, high quality coal is used for providing electricity,

heating homes and for heavy industry.

Slawek Polak is a foreman in this mine.

Poland is highly dependent on coal.

It not only provides most of its electricity

but is a major exporter and is a big employer -

over 100,000 people are working in the Polish coal industry.

Any reduction in coal production will have a mayor

effect on employment.

Apart from coal, Poland does potentially have another very

lucrative power source.

In 2010, Poland didn't generate much renewable energy - only 9%.

And, by 2020, they are hoping to raise this to 15% to meet EU targets.

In Scotland we are aiming to generate the equivalent

of 100% of our electricity from renewables by 2020.

To meet EU expectations, Poland needs to make a huge investment -

the equivalent of 50 billion pounds.

So far, Scotland has invested 3.3 billion pounds to achieve its targets.

Poland also needs to improve its recycling -

in 2010, less than 15% of municipal waste

was recycled in Poland, well below the UK at 25%.

Improving recycling will help the environment

and create employment, as well, but there is no getting away from it.

As a member of the European Union, Poland will be expected to

eventually switch from using coal to using cleaner power sources.

But the end of mining will have a huge impact on the people who

work there.

Like all EU countries, finding the balance between economic

and environmental concerns is a complex issue for Poland.

Since the end of World War II, and especially since the fall

of Communist rule, Poland has changed beyond recognition.

Generally, Poles do not feel they have merely joined the European Union,

they feel they have fulfilled a destiny disrupted by war.

It is now a vibrant member of the EU and the impact of Polish

migration can be felt not just in Europe, but worldwide.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd