Grandpa-gate: the story continues...

Did Donald Tusk’s dad’s dad fight in the German army during WWII?

Well, two days after the story broke (see previous post) - and much frenzied digging around by journalists - we now know, for sure, that Donald Tusk’s granddad didn’t do the unpatriotic thing and fight in the trenches for Hitler.

But Donald Tusk’s granddad’s brother did!

In August 1942, Donald Tusk’s granddad’s brother signed up with the Wehrmacht army. His career fighting for the Nazi’s was a short one, however. In late October he deserted, somewhere in Western Europe. And a few weeks after that, there are documents showing that he was fighting for a Polish resistance unit.

Tusk himself has expressed surprise over the revelations – such as they are – as that generation of his family never talked about the war, all that much, he said.

But his grandpa’s brother’s actions were not unusual ones during the war. Many Poles escaped to France, Holland, Norway this way, and then joined up with resistance movements, or the allied army.

TVN’s evening news program spent six minutes, and two different pieces, on this non-story. What will the next revelation be? That the Donald Tusk camp leaks an internal memo showing that Lech Kaczynski’s great-great-great-great grandma had a dog that once pissed down the boot of Napoleon Bonaparte while he was passing through Poland on his way to fight the Russians, therefore proving that the Law and Justice Party are not serious about getting rid of the zloty and introducing the Euro? Perhaps.