Pole and Hungarian brothers be
The full, two-couplet Hungarian version reads Lengyel, magyar – két jó barát, Együtt harcol s issza borát, Vitéz s bátor mindkettője, Áldás szálljon mindkettőre.
A shorter Hungarian couplet Lengyel, magyar – két jó barát, együtt harcol s issza borát.
The Polish bratanek (in modern parlance, "brother's son", or fraternal nephew) differs in meaning from the Hungarian barát ("friend"), though the words look similar.
The Polish word rokosz (a gathering to resist royal authority) derives from Hungary's Rákos [hu], a field near Pest which was the medieval venue for mass meetings of Hungarian nobility.
The nobility of both countries enjoyed wine (imported to Poland primarily from Hungary during the Middle Ages), resulting in a similar temperament and lifestyle.
According to one source, the proverb's original Polish version was Węgier, Polak dwa bratanki i do szabli i do szklanki.
According to Julian Krzyżanowski, the saying was inspired by the political asylum in Szepesség, Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Spiš, Slovakia), of the confederation's leaders.
[3][4] Future Polish King Władysław I the Elbow-high, fighting the Teutonic Order, found shelter at the courts of the Aba and Záh (Nógrád Castle) clans in Hungary.
At age twenty he was killed in the Battle of Varna, in which a coalition of Central and Eastern European countries led by Poland and Hungary was defeated by the Turks.
The Polish historian Krzysztof Baczkowski [pl], who analyzed Polish-Hungarian correspondence and personal encounters in the late 15th and the first half of the 16th century, concluded that with no other neighbour did the Poles have such "frequent and lively" contacts, which intensified with time and led to many strong friendships as well as mutual sociocultural, military, and legal influences.
[12] After the 30 September 1938 Munich Agreement (which fatally wounded Czechoslovakia and, after the proclamation of the First Slovak Republic, led to the remainder of the country being taken over by Germany), Poland and Hungary worked through diplomatic and paramilitary means to restore their common border by engineering the return of Carpathian Ruthenia to Hungary.
In March 1939, however, in response to Hungary's lobbying, Hitler changed his mind about a common Hungarian-Polish frontier and decided instead to betray Germany's ally, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who had begun organizing Ukrainian military units in 1938 in a sich outside Uzhhorod, the capital of Subcarpathian Rus', which had been restyled Carpatho-Ukraine.
[14] On 17 September 1939, pursuant to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the Gestapo–NKVD conferences, the Soviet Union seized eastern and southeastern Poland and incorporated them into western Ukraine.
The evacuated Polish forces quickly, eluding or escaping internment, made their way west to France, there to regroup and continue the war alongside Poland's western allies.
The Polish Red Cross sent 44 tons of medical supplies to Hungary by air, and larger amounts were sent by road and rail.
