God Bless the People of Poland!

God Bless the great people of Poland! A heart-breaking, but also heart-warming, photo of baby strollers left as anonymous gifts by generous Polish mothers at the train station for the arriving Ukrainian mothers who arrive as refugees with children.?Poland is an amazing country and a tremendous ally of the US and NATO.?It is a country of 37 million Poles, yet they have taken in over 1 million Ukrainian refugees in the past two weeks.?That is an enormous number of refugees. That would be the equivalent of the US taking 10 million immigrants in two weeks.

The Poles can empathize with the suffering of the Ukrainian people suffering under the Russians. Of all countries, the Poles in particular have suffered under Russia tremendously over the past century.? On 23 August 1939, two madmen, Stalin and Hitler, signed an agreement to split up Eastern Europe. The Pact was called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.??The Pact basically split up Poland between the Germans and the Russians. ?Hitler invaded Poland from the west a week later on 1 September 1939 and Stalin invaded Poland from the east on 16 September 1939.?Caught between two of the largest armies in the world, Poland collapsed, but lost 140,000 fighting in their defense.?The Germans and the Russians committed horrible atrocities against the Polish people throughout the war including the German concentration camp at Auschwitz, near Krakow.?The Russians executed 22,000 Polish leaders at Katyn in early 1940.?

Despite the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler violated and attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, nearly reaching Moscow. The Soviets finally turned the war against the Germans and battled all the way to Berlin- through Poland again.

Poland suffered tremendously as the war raged east, and then west. An estimated 5 million Poles were killed in World War II due to the Germans and Russians. The Poles can empathize with their Ukrainian neighbors who lost 8 million in World War II and also suffered under Soviet occupation for 45 years.?

After the war, all of Poland fell under the Soviet sphere and a puppet communist government was installed for 46 years throughout the Cold War. So for over 50 years in total the Poles suffered under the Russians. In 1991 Soviet troops finally left Poland as the Cold War ended.?In 1999 Poland joined NATO and in 2004 Poland was invited to join the European Union (EU).? Poland is now a tremendous ally of the United States. Polish troops served alongside American soldiers in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since the fall of Communism, under capitalism and democracy, the economy of Poland has thrived with a GDP of $1.22 trillion per year and the 19th largest economy in the world.? But Poland fears Russian aggression continuing past Ukraine. 14 wide-body planes per day arrive in eastern Poland with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Javelin anti-tank missiles, destined for Ukraine to be used against invading Russians.

Putin's name now joins the names of Stalin and Hitler as another madman aggressor by invading Ukraine. One of the weapons being used currently against the Russian illegal invasion of Ukraine is a bottle filled with gasoline with a simple lit fuse in it.?When thrown against a tank or vehicle it explodes. This very simple improvised incendiary device is nicknamed the “Molotov cocktail". It was a pejorative name after the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, by Finnish soldiers after Russia invaded Finland in November 1939 (called the "Winter War") which was part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Stalin and Hitler. ?

Now Molotov cocktails are again killing invading Russians.??The Molotov cocktails were part of the reason that the Finns killed so many invading Russians in the Winter War. The Finns lost 25,000 dead, but killed over 100,000 Russians. The Molotov cocktail, along with Javelin anti-tank weapons, Stinger missiles, and brave Ukrainian soldiers, will hopefully prove fatal to the Russian Army and drive them from Ukraine.

And then strollers can return to a free, and safe, Ukraine.