A Witness uses bread rolls on a cafe table to provide a cynical and rapid-fire history of Poland's shifting borders and partitions. The Narrator observes and occasionally interjects as the Witness illustrates how the country was repeatedly dismantled and reclaimed by neighboring powers leading up to 1945.
WITNESS: All right, 1720 but no later. You won't understand Poland's attitude to Russia until you understand some Polish history. This won't take long.
NARRATOR: I hope not.
WITNESS: Nobody except the Poles remembers that for 300 years this was the biggest and freest country in Middle-Europe, spanning the continent from the Baltic almost to the Black Sea and reaching hundreds of miles east into modern Russia. Russia's greatness came after Poland's and was achieved at Poland's expense. During the eighteenth century, Poland came under Russian domination. This alarmed the other great powers, Austria and Prussia, so in 1772 Catherine the Great gave a bit of Poland to each of them to keep them quiet.
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