History lesson for you - the meme famously references one of the opening acts of the Warsaw Uprising. On the evening of 1 August 1944, units of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) commanded by Colonel Bolesław Jaramy, coordinating with a Communist partisan resistance group from the Polish Corridor named Battle - National Organization of Gdańsk (Bitwa - Organizacja Narodowa Gdańska, B-ONG), part of the pro-Soviet People's Army (Armia Ludowa), ambushed and eliminated a convoy of the SS Assault Brigade Langemarck, formerly part of the Flemish Legion.

The SS Brigade consisted primarly of Belgian volunteers, among whom many had already attained a reputation of infamy for their crimes against humanity serving in the Belgian Congo prior to the war; the continuation of these policies, manifesting in harassment and reprisals against Polish civilians in Nazi-occupied Warsaw contributed to their selection as the first target. At 17:30, when the convoy approached the concealed Polish fighters, Colonel Jaramy gave the green light for the attack over the radion with the words: "Now they are trapped like Congolese gorillas in a bush fire." The battle concluded after only 20 minutes; over 400 Belgians were killed or wounded by the Polish resistance.

Though the attack was intentionally coordinated with the B-ONG as to foster a sense of anti-fascist unity, following the collapse of the Warsaw Uprising and the subsequent Soviet occupation of Poland, the new Communist government out considerable efforts into downplaying Colonel Jaramy's command at best, and censoring all mentions of the ambush at worst. In 1947, Colonel Jaramy was arrested by the Security Office and placed on trial for "counter-revolutionary activities". Though the arrest was ordered by Stalin himself and with the intent of liquidating Jaramy, veterans of the B-ONG - some of them occupying high positions in the Polish People's Republic - intervened on Jaramy's behalf out of wartime respect, managing to commute his sentence to 10 years of hard labour in Poznań.

However, in 1956, Jaramy was reported dead less than a year before his release. Allegations of foul play immediately arose and contributed to that year's infamous workers' protests. In their clashes with the Polish People's Army, protesters paraphrased Colonel Jaramy's radio message as a battle cry - "Jaramy to B-ONG - [trapped] like Gorillas in Congo!"| This phrase entered the Polish collective consciousness as an idiom describing an afforless triumph, especially one achieved by tricking one's opponent.

Using this phrase in public prior to 1989, especially during the period of martial law in the 80s, was subject to heavy fines; after the fall of Communism in Poland, it once more surged in popularity. It was famously used by the head coach of the Polish national football team following the 10-0 victory over San Marino in 2009, and referenced in The Witcher series by Andrzej, Sapkowski, in the sequence describing the Battle of Brenna. Attempts were made by animal welfare activists to curtail the use of this phrase, citing animal cruelty.

*In 2006, 50 years after Jaramy's death, all Communist-era documents regarding him were declassified by the Polish government. The coroner's report stated heart failure as the cause of his death; General Jaruzelski commented on this fact during his trial, stating in defense of the Communist regime that "there was no proof of Communist reprisals", and that "dissidents such as Jaramy were shot in countries like Romania and Yugoslavia instead of being given lenient sentences". A 2019 poll shoed that 67% of Poles still believe Jaramy was silenced by the Communist regime, stating, ironically, that "he was hit like the gorillas in Congo".