My Success in America

George Welcel

Description

Be positive!

George Welcel, a native of Germany, wrote this autobiography more than thirty ears ago, but it was not until now that he felt compelled to have it translated into English, where he’s lived for forty-six years.



As someone who lived under communism for thirty years, he knows all too well its dangers, and he’s grown increasingly concerned by the left-wing democracy he’s seen becoming popular in the United States of America.



In this book, he reveals how his pregnant mother was transported to a labor camp from the Warsaw Uprising and how his father died at Auschwitz. Against all odds, his mother survived and was liberated by the Americans before traveling back to her native Poland with the author in her arms when he was just a baby.



He also highlights how he became one of the few Polish immigrants to America to achieve success, becoming a successful real estate broker and investor. Moreover, he warns against the dangers of allowing the left to continue its power grab unchecked.



Join the author as he shares an inspiring story of success and urges Americans to fight back against the rising tide of socialism and communism.

Sujets

• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 28 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665741453
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

My Success in America
 
 
 
 
 
GEORGE WELCEL
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2023 George Welcel.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.
 
 
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4144-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4229-0 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4145-3 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023905729
 
 
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 04/28/2023
CONTENTS
Introduction
 
Chapter 1       In Communist Poland
Chapter 2       European Travels
Chapter 3       In America
Chapter 4       In the Role of a Toastmaster
Chapter 5       A Few Remarks on the Capitalist Economy
Chapter 6       Travel Experiences
Chapter 7       The USA and Japan: A Comparison of the Two Greatest Powers
Chapter 8       Contemporary Poland
Chapter 9       On Good Management
Chapter 10     Kazia
Chapter 11     Ukraine
INTRODUCTION
It’s been almost thirty years since this biographical book, Mój sukces w Ameryce (My success in America), was written. After this amount of time, I have decided to have it translated into English. I have been living in the USA for forty-six years, and I lived under Communism for thirty years of my youth. We were then called the bananowa młodzież (young bloods. Currently in the United States, so-called left-wing democracy is coming to prominence. Young people do not know what socialism or communism are. This made me decide to have this book translated into English to show them what living under Communism was like. I have also seen and written about what is wrong in America.
I am a conservative and I supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election; I even received a letter of thanks from him. Currently I live on my ranch in Masuria, Poland, although my business of building 120 condominiums in Florida still keeps me there, so I live here and there.
I recommend my book to all the people who want to know what socialism was like and who want to help the right wing restore the former glory of the United States of America.
 
To my mother, Kazia Dębska, whom I could always count on. When I started this book, She lived happily, and when I finished, I was overwhelmed by her tragic death.
CHAPTER 1
IN COMMUNIST POLAND

I did not know my father. However, I know that he still had the noble name of Welcel vel Dubio on his ID. He was last seen in a uniform with a machine gun in the Old Town. I know that he fought in the Warsaw Uprising, fell into enemy hands, and died in Oświęcim. The Germans took my mother to Chemnitz, and even though she was pregnant, she was forced to work in a weapons factory. It was there, during an American air raid in a basement that served as a shelter, that I was born. It was on March 4, 1945, when the Reich, increasingly poorly supplied with food, surrounded by the tight ring of the Allied forces and constantly bombed, seemed to be the worst place on earth for a woman with a baby—and even more so for a Polish woman and a forced laborer—or, rather, a slave.
I know from my mother that the Germans there treated her humanely and with some respect, regardless of the newborn child. They brought food and a variety of clothes that she used to make diapers for me. But despite their kindness, it was very difficult for her.
After the Americans entered Chemnitz, my mother, as a young and attractive woman, had many offers to go to the States. However, her parents stayed in Warsaw, so her heart dictated her decision to return.
It was suggested that when writing these memoirs I should skip the years I spent in the People’s Republic of Poland. Those times no longer interest the reader, who is weary of martyrdom literature and not eager to settle accounts with the latest history. So if, contrary to these arguments, I am writing about Communist Poland, I am doing so for two reasons. Firstly, as a man who has lived in the United States of America for many years, and thus is able to compare the two regimes, I have a slightly different view of Communism than the typical “martyrdom” view. Secondly, without taking into account the political and economic background, the story of my emigration would be incomplete. After all, there are economic reasons for my departure from economics, and the politics and economy of the Polish People’s Republic to a large extent shaped the baggage of experiences I stood in possession of on American soil.
My situation in the Polish People’s Republic was quite special because my mother and grandfather belonged to the so-called private initiative. My family’s mercantile traditions went back to the interwar period, which would have been a plus for them in any normal country. In Communist Poland, businessmen, contemptuously called “privateers,” were a kind of accursed caste. For ideological reasons, they were persecuted fiscally and administratively, and as if that were not enough, the odium fell on their children as well. Such an entry was in the People’s Republic of Poland, especially in Stalinist times, as a stigma. What is worse, it developed a reluctant attitude toward people who, thanks to their ingenuity and work, achieved above-average property status. On the one hand, this was the result of propaganda constantly attacking wealthy merchants, craftsmen, and peasants; and on the other, the result of social envy, which was especially strong in the situation of general poverty. The Communists, by destroying private entrepreneurship, were implementing Mayakovsky’s gloomy slogan: “the individual is nothing, the individual is zero.” Only the masses were to count—the working masses of towns and villages—along with their alleged representative and guiding force, the party.
I am a bit afraid that although the party is no more, the specter of aversion toward wealthy people has survived in the society to this day. Like many other remnants of Communism, it is possible to cure this, but it will take time.
Unfortunately the tenement house in which my mother lived before the uprising was no longer there, and the beautiful house of my grandparents in Legionowo was forcibly inhabited by tenants. Immediately after the war, my grandparents lived in their six-apartment house in Legionowo, where there was a beautiful old garden.
Grandfather grew good, sweet strawberries as a hobby. The house had no sewage system, and people used to go to the toilet in a small house in the garden. There is a funny story connected with it; one morning my grandfather came back from the toilet and said, “You know what I’m going to tell you? Someone stole your shit from the toilet last night!” The local stalkers had probably pumped it out at night. If they had asked me, I would have given it to them for free.
Everyone laughed at this. It was repeated as a joke over the years. Later we had to settle down in Praga, in a one-room flat without any comforts. There were four of us: me, my sister, my mother, and her second husband. And the Communist system, in its most dangerous, Stalinist version, was slowly but consistently being installed all around.
But my family were tough people who did not give up easily. Grandfather Ignacy, who was my father’s replacement, had two wholesale and retail stores at Plac Kercelego in Warsaw’s Wola district before the war. After the war, which destroyed the shops and all his belongings, he had to start all over again and opened the so-called double booth in Praga, where he traded in toys and devotional religious articles, the latter of which particularly irritated the Communist authorities. The trade in devotional articles was quickly forbidden, and soon after that, the entire shopping area (i.e., the popular Zieleniak, named after Zieleniecka Street) was closed. he received a point in Targówek. There, however, the trade was much worse, and subsequent applications for a better location were refused.
There was no other option, so my grandparents moved the business to their apartment. Needless to say, in the light of the restrictive regulations of that time, it was illegal, similar to having a foreign currency, employing too many employees, and so forth. This gloomy paranoia seems to be forgotten by all those who want to see the PRL as a normal reality today, perhaps most heavily burdened with certain errors.
The People’s Republic of Poland conducted a police search in the apartment of my neighbor, an old woman, and confiscated evidence of a crime—a few pieces of lard and a few gold coins! It was 1955 and that was the “normal reality” I had to grow up in.
As I have already mentioned, our apartment was located i