A few weeks back, I was attending an American Philosophical Association meeting in Baltimore’s Harbor East district. My first night there, I ventured out for supper, only to come upon this impressive sculpture a block from our hotel—the National Katyn Memorial. It honors roughly five thousand Polish officers who were executed by the Soviet Union at the start of World War II. In those days, Hitler and Stalin were working under a mutual non-aggression pact, one that allowed displacement of Poles to Russia as Germany invaded their land. The Polish military was troublesome to both Axis nations, so they were brutalized from both sides. And because the US came to depend on Russia as an ally against the Nazis, the story of this atrocity in the Katyn Forest was suppressed in America until the early 1950s. And it wasn’t until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 that the Russians owned up to the horror.

The golden part of the monument represents the fire of martyrdom. (It’s symbolic; around 5,000 were bound, shot in the head, and dumped into a mass grave.) The gray figures to the right of the flames portray other cherished Polish figures, including two who fought against Muslim occupation of Europe—King Wladyslaw III along the Black Sea in the 16th century and King Jan Sobieski in the 17th century at Vienna. Indeed, if Sobieski and his cavalry had not intervened to lift the siege and turn back the Ottomans, Munich and Geneva may well have become northern versions of Istanbul and Cairo. (And were it not for Charles Martel, who blocked an 8th century Muslim invasion in France and for Spain’s Ferdinand and Isabella, who drove the Moors back into North Africa in the 15th century, Paris and Brussels could have more nearly come to resemble Ankara and Jakarta than these European capitals as we know them.)  Furthermore, the monument includes an image of Kazimierz Pulaski, “Father of the American Cavalry,” who came from Poland to bolster the American Revolution, and who died in 1779 leading an attack on the British at Savannah. (BTW, I was married in Pulaski Country, where Sharon’s dad was pastor of Park Hill Baptist Church, North Little Rock, Arkansas.)

So I’m not so inclined to smile when someone throws out a “Polack” joke, so popular in my college days. Fact is, the Poles are an heroic people in my estimation. I’ve mentioned Sobieski and Pulaski, but more recently, I’ve been grateful to Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II and “bedeviled” the Communists, who were oppressing his country. And, of course, I could go on and on about Americans of Polish heritage who’ve been standouts in our nation. For instance, let’s take a quick look at sports: In baseball, Carl Yastrzemski; football, Mike Ditka; basketball, Mike Krzyzewski; and, ice hockey, Wayne Gretzky (who, though born Canadian, still played for three American NHL teams). And public names can fool you: Baseball manager Danny Ozark was born Danny Orzechowski, and Cardinal great, Stan Musial was originally Stanislaw Franciszek Musial.

There are several reasons given for picking on the Poles. You can find them on line, where you’ll see them to be bogus, whether reflecting the prejudices of earlier European immigrants to America or picking up on Marlon Brando’s portrayal of the Stanley Kowalski character in A Streetcar Named Desire. That’s the way it goes for ethnic, regional, occupational, and denominational jokes, but I don’t want to go overboard and dismiss them all, as some are wont to do. They can be a good fun, with all of us taking our hits. Just think of the Aggie, lawyer, and preacher jokes, e.g., about the rich man criticized for not helping his fellow survivors on a desert island to rouse assistance from the mainland—“Don’t worry. I’m a tither, and my pastor will find me.” Ouch! Cruel, but somewhat fair.

I read once that the British parliament was winding up to outlaw jokes crafted at the expense of religious groups (Muslims in particular). Hyper-sensitive, short-sighted Christians were jumping on board, and it took comic actor Rowan Atkinson to do much of the heavy lifting to block efforts to criminalize what they were huffing and puffing to call “incitement to religious hatred.” ‘Hatred’ is one of those nuclear words like ‘racist’ designed to destroy thoughtful dialogue and smash the opponent into smithereens, and I hope we’ll apply them only as a matter of well-founded last resort. For one thing, jokes can help keep us humble, self-effacing, and honest. But, we’ve moved from “We are not amused” to “We are appalled and insistent upon harsh censure or cancellation of the offender.” Ugh!

Besides, some of the best jokes are self-directed. I picked up a couple of them poking fun at Jesuits from, yes, Jesuits. How about “redneck” jokes from somewhat-redneck Jeff Foxworthy? And then there’s this one from a Pole:

A Polack goes to the eye doctor. The bottom line of the eye chart has the letters,

C Z Y N Q S T A S Z.

The Optometrist asks, "Can you read this?" 

"Read it?" the Polack replies, "I know the guy!”

Oh, and did you see what Babylon Bee did to some of us Evangelicals? How dare they!

Let’s take a deep breath. Yes, there are cheap shots that invite pushback. But I’m grateful for the way we can roll with some biting or gumming humor, even as the Poles do, though they’ve been mightily abused through the centuries.