Tag: freedom

Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , ,

Miscellany for Learning

The lecture notes of University of Kansas Professor Anna M. Cienciala: Nationalism and Communism in East Central Europe. The notes cover the history of East Central Europe from the partitions of Poland beginning in 1772 through to the post-Communiest period.

The Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence’s Chronology of Mass Violence in Poland 1918-1948

Telling the Irena Sendler story: Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project

Protestant kids from rural Kansas, discovered a Polish Catholic woman who saved Jewish children. Irena Sendler and these students have chosen to repair the world. This web site shares the legacy and life of Irena Sendler, plus her ‘discovery’ for the world.

Editions Bibliotekos announced that Dr. John Guzlowski will participate in a series sponsored by the English Department of St. Francis College on October 11th from 4–6 pm. John’s reading and discussion, entitled War Remembered – Lightning and Ashes: Two Lives Shaped by World War II, will be the third such event initiated by Editions Bibliotekos and hosted by St. Francis. The event will be held in Founders Hall, 180 Remsen St., Brooklyn Heights, NY, and is free and open to the public.

CNN’s Eye On takes you to Poland starting Monday, September 12th.

Through interviews and in-depth coverage, get an up-close look at the country in an international context on TV and online.

In 1989, Poland became the first member of the Soviet bloc to establish a non-Communist government.

Since then it has run headlong into the western world with one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe. The CIA World Factbook calls Poland a regional success story…

Poland’s multiethnic past is remembered in A Commonwealth of Diverse Cultures. Highlights include the contributions of Poles whose heritage is Jewish or is from the Ruthenian/Byzantine East, Lithuania, Italy, France, Germany, Armenia, the Islamic southeast. This history of Scotts in Poland is not covered, but is also interesting.

James Conroyd Martin recently finished his manuscript focusing on the Polish Insurrection of 1830. He has posted lines from the manuscript on Facebook. Also, check out Morgen Bailey’s interview with James Martin at Morgen Bailey’s Writing Blog

Kanonia Square below was aglow with torches borne by people streaming towards Długa Street. Events had moved fast, much faster than Viktor had imagined. The people had joined the cadets’ insurgency with unexpected enthusiasm and resolve. Russians had always underrated the Poles, just as the Turks had at the Battle of Vienna. Here was more modern proof.

From The Text Message: Little Poland en la hacienda

From 1943 to 1946, Colonia Santa Rosa in Guanajuato, Mexico was the site of a US-government sponsored home for Polish refugees. About 240 miles northwest of Mexico City and “10 minutes’ ride by mule-drawn tram from the Leon railway station,” the hacienda included a 39-room ranch house, a flour mill, ten wheat storage warehouses, a chapel and other buildings, as well as several acres for growing crops. By October 1943, almost 1,500 Poles were sheltered at Colonia Santa Rosa.

Their path to Mexico was an unlikely one. Having been removed from their communities by the Soviet military in 1939, they first were put to work in Russia and Siberia. They were resettled in Iran by the Russians, and fell into the care of the British government. The British relocated them to camps in Karachi, then still a part of India, and sought US assistance for their support. An agreement was reached between the British, US and Mexican governments with the provisional Polish government in London to relocate these refugees to Mexico…

Martin Stepek seeks to understand and pass on what he has learned about his family’s life in Poland, and their odyssey to find refuge in Polish Legacy. His grandmother and grandfather died in Poland during World War Two, and his father and two aunts narrowly avoided the same fate.

BBC announces a new drama: The Spies Of Warsaw for BBC Four

Two 90-minute film adaptations of Alan Furst’s acclaimed novels will bring to BBC Four a combination of historically located, intelligent narratives, interlaced with flawed, romantic and utterly compelling characters. Furst, widely recognised as the current master of the historical spy novel, evokes a Europe stumbling into a Second World War, his taut and richly atmospheric thrillers grace the bestseller lists right around the globe. They have been described as “Casablanca meets John le Carre”.

Richard Klein, Controller, BBC Four, says: “Alan Furst is one of the world’s finest writers on war and the costs of war on human relationships. It is with great pleasure that I can confirm that BBC Four will be dramatising for television one of his best known novels, Spies Of Warsaw. Furst and Four are a very good fit and I hope our audiences will enjoy the result of this collaboration.”

The characters of Alan Furst’s best-selling spy novels roam the foggy nights and steal across the rainy, cobbled streets of Prague, Berlin, Warsaw, Rome, and Paris. Furst’s protagonists join the ranks of the Resistance in one way or another. They include faded nobility, b-movie filmmakers, newspapermen, ship’s captains and compromised businessmen as well as waiters, shopkeepers, jaded intellectuals, tarnished grand dames, and boozy British secret agents. Together they march in the underground army that seeks to fight back against the Nazi occupiers.

Spanning the decade from 1933 to 1943, as the Germans slowly consolidate their political stranglehold on Europe, Furst’s stories are portraits of subjugated peoples who try to resist the suffocating inevitability of Hitler’s regime. They show the potency and the importance of espionage and pure intelligence in the run up to the war…

Alan Alda had his new play about Marie Skłodowska Curie, RADIANCE: The Passion of Marie Curie, read during opening night of the World Science Festival in New York on June 1st. From the NY Times: Meryl Streep to Participate in Alan Alda’s Marie Curie Play

Mr. Alda, who has written five screenplays and a carton-full of television scripts, said on Monday that “Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie,” is his first attempt at playwriting. The idea struck him about three years ago when he was planning to organize a reading of excerpts from Curie’s letters for the World Science Festival. “Then I found out her letters were all still radioactive and I switched to Albert Einstein,” said Mr. Alda, who has a passion for science. “But I love Marie Curie and I think her story is so important and dramatic, I wanted to explore it and write a play about it.”

Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in 1902 – for the theory of radioactivity that she developed with her husband, Pierre – and the first person to receive the award twice. She was awarded her second Nobel in chemistry in 1911 for her discovery of two elements, radium and polonium. There have been several renditions of Curie’s life on stage, television and film, including the 1943 drama starring Greer Garson. Without giving too much of the plot away, Mr. Alda said his play focuses on the period between her first Nobel Prize and her second nine years later. The Nobel committee did not originally want to include Curie in the award and only backed down after pressure from her husband. “But they wouldn’t let her get up and accept the award,” Mr. Alda said. “She had to sit in the audience.” In the intervening years, Pierre Curie died and Marie had to run a gauntlet of setbacks and obstacles, but by 1911, Mr. Alda said, “her work is finally recognized, and she takes full credit for it, even though by now she’s weakened by radiation poisoning.”

“I think she had a kind of cognitive dissonance about it,” Mr. Alda said of the damaging fallout from her experiments. “She didn’t want to believe it was sickening her,” he added. “It’s part of the heroism of science itself. We as a species are just so interested in understanding things that might be dangerous to mess with, but nothing stops us.”

Mr. Alda, a voracious reader of nonfiction, said he did his own research. “All I read is science,” he said, though confessed that the math and chemistry involved still elude him…

From Polskie Radio: Poland – a land that time forgot?

A grim-looking farmer with a pitchfork and communist-era industrial cityscapes – such are the images of Poland often presented in modern-day history books in Western Europe, finds a new report.

The backward image of Poland so often presented in history books has been tackled in a report issued on behalf of the Foreign Affairs Ministry by historian Professor Adam Suchoński from Opole University, who looked into the history textbooks used in high schools throughout Europe.

“These textbooks are still very much in use. Reprinted every couple of years, reinforcing negative stereotype of Poles and their country,” says Professor Suchoński, adding that “[Poles] are depicted as fighters, victims of war, persecution and failed national uprisings.”

The historian suggests that Poland should prepare an extensive overview of its history, which it should forward to the Georg Eckert Institute, an acclaimed reference center for textbook research in Germany and a Mecca for authors of history books.

Modjeska — Woman Triumphant: The first full-length documentary made about Helena Modjeska

Helena Modjeska was born in Krakow, Poland, on October 12, 1840. She received her only formal education while attending the convent run by the Order of the Presentation Sisters. She was seduced at a young age by one of the family guardians, Gustave Sinnmayer. He later fathered her two children, Rudolph and her daughter Marylka, who died in infancy. As the couple traveled with their acting troupe around the provincial towns of Galicia, Gustave used the stage name “Modrzejewski” while Helena adopted the feminine version “Modrzejewska”. Later, when performing abroad, she anglicized her name to “Modjeska”.

Realizing that her impresario could no longer advance her career, Helena left Sinnmayer, taking their son Rudolf, and returned to Krakow. While engaged in the Krakow theatre, she met the Polish nobleman, Karol Bozenta Chlapowski. They married in 1868 and left for Warsaw where she became the most celebrated actress of the Polish national theatre. Her brothers Jozef and Feliks Benda were also respected actors in Poland. The Chlapowski home became the center of the artistic and literary world. Yet, due to the political situation in Poland and its influence on her work, Helena’s life became unbearable.

In 1876, for personal and political reasons, Modjeska and her family emigrated to the United States with a small group of friends. They purchased a ranch in Anaheim, California, forming a Polish colony of intellectuals. The colonists knew very little about farming and the utopian experiment eventually failed.

Modjeska returned to the stage, debuting in San Francisco with an English version of Adrienne Lecouvreur and reprising the Shakespearean roles that she had performed in Poland. Despite her accent and imperfect command of English, Modjeska achieved great success in her thirty-year career in the United States and abroad.

In 1893 Modjeska was invited to speak in a women’s conference at the Chicago World’s Fair. She described the hardships of Polish women in the Russian and Prussian-ruled parts of Poland. The Russian tsar banned her from traveling or performing in Russian territory.

Modjeska became known for her support of charitable causes. She had ignited and influenced the careers of many international artists, such as Sienkiewicz and Paderewski. She advanced and uplifted the profession of acting for women…

Deconstructing myth: Cavalry did not charge the tanks – some interesting facts about the start of World War II. Based on John Radzilowski’s work and featured in the NocturN510 Blog.

The battle in the Polish Corridor was especially intense. It was here that the myth of the Polish cavalry charging German tanks was born. As Gen. Heinz Guderian’s panzer and motorized forces pressed the weaker Polish forces back, a unit of Pomorska Cavalry Brigade slipped through German lines late in the day on Sept. 1 in an effort to counterattack and slow the German advance. The unit happened on a German infantry battalion making camp. The Polish cavalry mounted a saber charge, sending the Germans fleeing at that moment, a group of German armored cars arrived on the scene and opened fire on the cavalry, killing several troopers and forcing the rest to retreat. Nazi propagandists made this into “cavalry charging tanks” and even made a movie to embellish their claims. While historians remembered the propaganda, they forgot that on September 1, Gen. Guderian had to personally intervene to stop the German 20th motorized division from retreating under what it described as “intense cavalry pressure.” This pressure was being applied by the Polish 18th Lancer Regiment, a unit one tenth its size.

Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , ,

In memoriam

From the Washington Post: George de Wrzalinski, GSA librarian and Polish emigre

George de Wrzalinski, a retired General Services Administration librarian and the scion of an aristocratic Polish family who during World War II was pressed into forced labor in a German aircraft factory, died Aug. 13 at the Powhatan Nursing Home in Falls Church.

He was 85 and died of complications related to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure and the effects of a stroke suffered in May, said his executor and friend, Margaret Shannon.

Mr. Wrzalinski (pronounced “Jalinsky”) retired from the GSA in 1997 as chief librarian of the technical division of the National Capital Region. This job included oversight of architectural, engineering and other blueprints for federal buildings in the Washington area, including the White House.

He came to the United States in 1954 and was naturalized as a citizen in 1960. His neighbors said he flew a U.S. flag at his house in Arlington County every day, but he also retained his Polish roots and Old World mannerisms.

“When he greeted me, he always kissed my hand,” said Shannon, who lived next door to Mr. Wrzalinski for 36 years.

Jerzy Ludwik de Wrzalinski was born Jan. 30, 1926, in Poznan, Poland. His father was a colonel in the Polish army and would later become mayor of Gniesno. His mother was a concert pianist, and a grandmother was a Polish princess. A twin sister died at birth.

In 1940, he was a 14-year-old high school student in Gniesno when the occupying Germans shipped him to an aircraft factory near Breslau, where he ­reinstalled oxygen lines in damaged aircraft. He would later tell friends that he began smoking in those years because laborers who smoked were allowed cigarette breaks. (He quit smoking in 1983.)

Near the end of the war, he was relocated to a forced labor camp at Aschersleben, which was a subcamp of Buchenwald. He was liberated by the British there in April 1945.

After the war, Mr. Wrzalinski lived in displaced persons camps in Germany for several years. He was fluent in German, Polish, English, French and Russian, and he had various translating jobs.

Upon immigrating to the United States, he settled in St. Paul, Minn., where he worked in the personnel office of Remington Rand, the business-machine manufacturer. He had said he was once denied a pay raise there with the explanation that “he can be happy that he’s in America.” He studied English at the University of Minnesota’s extension division.

When he became a U.S. citizen in St. Paul, he changed his first name, Jerzy, to its anglicized version, George.

He moved to the Washington area in the early 1960s and became a cataloguer and analyst for a College Park documentation company. Later he was a documents and information specialist for a NASA contractor. He joined the GSA in 1984 and retired in 1997.

Mr. Wrzalinski never married, and he had no immediate survivors.

In the last years of his life, his neighbors in Fairlington supervised his medical care and helped look after his house, where in addition to the American flag, he flew the Polish flag and the state flags of Maryland and Virginia daily. He had an elaborate and extensive flower garden.

He looked the part of a European aristocrat. On summer days, he wore tennis whites, unwrinkled and pressed immaculately, and he liked to invite friends and neighbors over for drinks in the evening. He frequented the Fairlington community swimming pool, where he befriended the Polish lifeguards.

Marian Wojciechowski, 97, of Las Vegas

Passed away June 5, 2011. Was born April 25, 1914, in Polaniec, Poland.

Marian was a World War II veteran, a platoon leader who fought German forces Sept. 1, 1939 at the Battle of Mokra, considered to be a tactical victory for the Polish cavalry. His regiment, the 21st Pulk Ulanow Nadwislanskich, was later awarded the Virtuti Militari. He continued fighting after Russia attacked Sept. 17, 1939, then joined the Polish underground resistance. He was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo in Radom, and sent to Auschwitz (Nr. 50333), Gross Rosen, and Leitmeritz concentration camps. In the displaced persons camps of post-war Germany, he met and married Wladyslawa Poniecka, who had survived the Gestapo prison Pawiak in Warsaw, and the concentration camp Ravensbruck (Nr. 7532) north of Berlin. In 1950, they came to America with their daughter, and settled in Toledo, Ohio.

Marian was awarded a master’s degree in economics and business administration from the Warsaw School of Economics in 1937. He worked as auditor for the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives before his arrest in 1942. From 1946-1947, he was an officer in the Polish Civilian Guard under the command of the U.S. Army in the American Zone of West Germany. He also served as chief liaison officer for Polish groups to the International Refugee Organization. Marian was the owner and editor of the Polish-language weekly newspaper “Ameryka Echo” in Toledo until 1961. He worked for many years as urban renewal project administrator with the City of Toledo. From 1980-1994 he was an administrator with the Neighborhood Housing Services of Toledo, finally retiring at the age of 80. Marian moved to Las Vegas in 1998 to be closer to his family.

Marian was a past commander of the Polish Army Veterans Association Post 74 in Toledo for 10 years, a member of American Legion Post 545 in Toledo, and a member of the VFW. He actively participated in many organizations, such as the Polish American Congress and Polish National Alliance. Marian also received many honors and awards during his lifetime, including medals for his military service during World War II and his work in urban development. In 2009, at the age of 95, Marian realized his wish to return to Mokra to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II. He also visited the former Polish Army Cadet Officers Cavalry School in Grudziadz, and even Auschwitz along the way. He was accompanied on this splendid adventure by his grandson Craig with Jodi, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, and Dr. Roman Rozycki of the Las Vegas Polish community.

From the Modjeska Club: Tadeusz Bociański

Born 17 August 1935. Died 14 July 2011. Tadeusz Bociański served as the President of the Modjeska Club from 1983 to 1989. His activities contributed to elevating the Club to its high social status and to establishing its broad scope of cultural activities. With an extraordinarily limited budget, he was able to bring to California the most distinguished Polish politicians, actors and artists. As the owner of a Cultural Agency PolArt he organized performances by famous Polish theaters and cabarets throughout the entire West Coast and the Southwest. He was also active in other social and cultural organizations. On 17 January 1998, he received the Cavalier Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for his achievements in promoting Polish culture abroad.

Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord!

Art, Christian Witness, PNCC, , , ,

Art and Prayer for September 11th

World Trade Center III, Franciszek C. Kulon

Almighty God, by Whom our fathers won their liberties of old; grant that we and all people of this land may be strong to maintain our freedom against the assaults of those who by aggression seek to enslave us to their will. Guide, we beseech Thee, our President and all to whom has been committed the government of this nation, giving them special gifts of wisdom and understanding, that in defense of our liberties they may be instruments of lasting peace for all mankind. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. — A Prayer for the Nation from A Book of Devotions and Prayers According to the Use of the Polish National Catholic Church.

Art, Poetry, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , ,

Art for September 1st

IX.1939 - Polish History, Kasper Pochwalski, 1964

Seventy-one years ago, on September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. In those first days and the six years that followed, more than five million Poles died.

Resources and reflections on Poland and the start of World War II:

John Guzlowski’s poem: Landscape with Dead Horses wherein he seeks to capture and describe the feelings of his parents and the Poles of their generation.

A poem: I Sing the Song of Maczkowce, by Martin Stepek commemorating his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and all Poles from the pre-war eastern border area who were forcible resettled in labour camps in Siberia by the Soviet Red Army in 1940 and 1941.

New Duns exhibition will focus on moving story of Polish troops: ‘For Our Freedom and Yours’ – the story of the 1st Polish armored division at the Duns library. The exhibit traces the story of the famous Polish armoured division, from their formation in Duns in 1942 to their campaigns in western Europe in 1944-1945 under the command of the esteemed General Stanislaw Maczek. Admission to the exhibition in Duns Library Exhibition Room is free from August 13th to September 24th.

The Doomed Soldiers – Polish Underground Soldiers 1944-1963 – The Untold Story: The story behind the underground armies resisting Nazi German and Russian Communist occupiers as well as collaborators.

Ułani, ułani – Archival information on the Polish Calvary and resistance during the first days of the war. Abandoned by allies, and attacked from behind by the Red Army, the documentary includes interviews with surviving cavalry from the September campaign, statements from Nazi German leaders, and the fate of the Polish cavalry after surrender.

Night Of Flames – A historical novel and winner of the 2007 “Outstanding Achievemnet Award” from the Wisconsin Library Association. The story follows Polish cavalry officer, Jan Kopernik, and his wife, Anna, through five years of war and the underground resistance in their courageous quest for freedom.

[AMAZONPRODUCT= 1590131665]

The Katyn Order, the acclaimed historical novel/thriller set in World War II surrounding one of history’s most heinous war crimes.

[AMAZONPRODUCT= 1590135725]

M.B.B. Biskupski’s Hollywood’s War with Poland: 1939-1945. Danuta Goska reviews the book at Writing the Polish Diaspora and states:

[The book] is a must-buy, must-read and must-keep book for several audiences. Twenty-first century American citizens seeking insight into ethnic jockeying for power will want to read this book. Conspiracy theorists fascinated by the ability of popular culture to twist human minds will find support for their most Orwellian nightmares. Polish Americans who care about the abysmal position of Polonia in the arts, politics, journalism and academia will buy, read, and reread it. Biskupski’s style is straightforward, without academic or aesthetic flourishes. The average reader will have no problem.

Hollywood’s War with Poland is an essential resource that proves, beyond any question, that powerful people, prompted by geopolitical competition and deep hostility worked hard to sully the image of Poles, Polish-Americans, and Poland. They did this during World War II, when Poland was playing a key historical role. World War II began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland…

[AMAZONPRODUCT= 0813125596]

Art, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , ,

Art for August 31st

Workers 1980, Andrzej Pagowski

From Polskie Radio: Landmark Solidarity ‘August Agreement’ remembered

Today marks the anniversary of the famed August Agreement, signed 31 years ago on 31 August 1980 – an event that marked the beginning of the end for communism in Poland.

Also known as the Gdansk Agreement, the breakthrough followed strikes at the fabled shipyards in the northern Polish city, with former employee Lech Walesa at the helm.

By 24 April 1980, the communist government estimated that some 130,000 employees from 140 companies in Gdansk and neighbouring Gdynia had joined the strike. The nearby port city of Gdynia followed suit, with approximately 60,000 not turning up for work.

The authorities were compelled to act. As it happened, Poland’s communist leader Edward Gierek called for a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Negotiations ensued between the so-called Interfactory Strike Committee (MKS) and the government. Talks touched on such key themes as censorship restrictions, the release of political prisoners and the allowing of the Church to participate in radio and television programmes.

The first point in the famed 21-demands struck a decisive blow:

“Acceptance of free trade unions that are independent of the party, and of enterprises, in accordance with convention No. 87 of the International Labor Organization concerning the right to form free trade unions.”

The agreement caused a brief eruption of freedom of expression in Poland, before the clampdown of December 1981, when a state of martial law was declared.
Nevertheless, the regime eventually fell due to efforts of Solidarity campaigners, culminating in the Round Table Agreement of spring 1989.

The Poster Art above is for the documentary Robotnicy ’80. In this clip from the movie you hear Lech Wałęsa say: Mamy prawo do strajku! (We have the right to strike!)

Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

Remembering 1 August 1944

Today marks the 67th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. The on-line Polonia community has commemorated the day in many ways. I begin with John Guzlowski’s poetry from The Warsaw Uprising, August 1, 1944

On August 1, 1944, the Polish resistance and the people of Warsaw rose up to throw off the Nazi oppressors. The Poles fought with guns, bricks, stolen grenades, sticks, and their hands and teeth. The Nazis retaliated with tanks, bombers, and fire.

63 days later the last Poles surrendered to the Germans.

250,000 men, women, and children were killed in the fighting, and the city of Warsaw was leveled by the Germans.

As a boy growing up, I would often hear my father talk about the fight the Poles made in the face of German military superiority. He would talk and sometimes he would weep for the dead.

My father wasn’t there, of course. He had been taken by the Germans to Buchenwald Concentration Camp several years before. But when he talked about the Warsaw Uprising, he spoke like a man who had been touched by something that he would never forget.

I tried to capture this in a poem called “Cross of Polish Wood…”

A historical timeline for the Warsaw Uprising can be found at the Warsaw Uprising 1944 website. And, remember to support Wisia’s Story, and projects like it, so to preserve first hand accounts of these events.

The History Channel aired Betrayal: The Battle for Warsaw in 2009. The film’s description is a fitting synopsis of the events that began this day:

The Warsaw Uprising was the largest and perhaps most heroic underground campaign of World War II. It was also one of the most desperate and little known battles of the war. Yet even as the Poles rose up against the Germans in the heart of Warsaw, they were callously betrayed. Not by their enemies but by their allies.

They were promised help that never came, so they took matters into their own hands. In the summer of 1944, more than 20,000 Polish Freedom Fighters and 220,000 Polish civilians died at the hands of the German Army during 63 days of hellacious battle in Poland’s capital city of Warsaw.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s Nazi forces invaded Poland from the West, and two weeks later, Russia invaded from the east. There they formed a resistance movement with the hope of eventually overthrowing German occupation in their homeland and re-gaining freedom. Polish soldiers, who had escaped, joined Allied forces around the world to battle the Axis, while in German-occupied Warsaw, the Polish underground published newspapers; plastered the city with fliers urging resistance; bombed supply trains; assassinated German officials in public; and gathered a force of 400,000 known as The Home Army.

The Germans responded with the brutality that was their trademark, setting up gallows around the city for public executions, rounding up suspected sympathizers and herding them onto trains bound for work camps and gas chambers.

By 1944, the Russians had switched sides and were allied to Britain and America. And as the Russians pushed the Germans out of Russian territory and back through Poland, the Polish underground prepared to rise up against the Germans in Warsaw. The plan was to liberate their capital just before the Russians reached Warsaw and liberate the city.

But to prevail the Poles would have to join forces with Joseph Stalin, the same man whose forces had massacred 22,000 Polish soldiers and buried them in mass graves only a few years earlier. On August 1, 1944 at 5 p.m., with the Russian army just miles away, The Home Army launched a surprise attack against the Germans … the Warsaw Uprising was underway. Yet, just when the Poles expected the Russians to join the battle, the Russians stopped as the Germans in Warsaw decimated the Polish insurgents. There was a reason: Stalin had no use for the insurgents; his plan was to install a communist puppet government in Poland after the war. Yet perhaps the most appalling aspect of the story is that Churchill and Roosevelt let Stalin get away with it.

Consisting entirely of archival footage and interviews with survivors, BETRAYAL: THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW is an inspiring and heartbreaking retrospective of one of the greatest fights you’ve probably never heard about. Highlights of BETRAYAL: THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW include:

  • The little-known Polish perspective on the latter years of World War II, when the under equipped Home Army struggled against superior German forces and waited for help from Allied forces that never seemed to come.
  • The historic summit in Tehran, in which Churchill and Roosevelt each separately promised Stalin that Poland would be his once Germany fell, paving the way for a half-century of Communist rule there after the War.
  • Tales of the heroic efforts of the Polish insurgents, including carrying the wounded to safety through the city sewers, the special efforts of the women of Poland both on the battlefield and as nurses in makeshift hospitals, and the efforts to find food and water in the war-torn streets of Warsaw.
  • Survivors share memories of German brutality, including pouring gasoline on living people and lighting them on fire. “These were not soldiers,” one survivor recalls, “They were rapists and murderers.”
  • The horribly botched efforts at support by the Russian and American Armed forces, which included supplying the Polish with thirty-year-old rifles that didn’t work and dropping relief supplies directly into the hands of the Germans.
  • The eventual surrender of The Home Army to German forces, after which Hitler placed the entire remaining population in concentration camps and leveled the city, building by building.

From YouTube and The Wall Speaks: Krystyna Rutczyńska, a courier for the AK (Home Army) speaks about her experience during the first day of the Warsaw Uprising. / Krystyna Rutczyńska, łączniczka AK w Powstaniu Warzawskim opowiada o przeżyciach pierwszego dnia Powstania Warszawskiego.

From Polskie Radio on commemorations in Poland: Warsaw Rising remembered

Ceremonies marking the 67th anniversary of the Warsaw Rising of Polish Home Army partisans against occupying Nazi German forces have begun in the Żolibórz district of the capital, where the Uprising began in the early afternoon hours on 1 August 1944.

Memorial events are also planned for tomorrow and Sunday, when President Bronislaw Komorowski will host a meeting with former insurgents who are arriving to Warsaw for the occasion from various parts of the world.

On Monday, the anniversary itself, in line with a long-standing tradition, sirens will wail across the city, buses and private cars will draw to a halt and pedestrians will stand still for a minute’s silence on the stroke of 5 pm, the exact time chosen by the Home Army to launch the uprising. The main ceremony, attended by top-ranking politicians, will be held hour at the Powązki Military Cemetery.

Special concerts, theatre performances, city games and sing-a-longs are also planned.

Fought in a bid to secure Poland’s post-war independence, the Warsaw Uprising was led by the Home Army – commanded by Poland’s government-in-exile in London – which secretly deployed around 50,000 fighters. Around 18,000 of them died in the sixty-three day-long battle.

Some 180,000 civilians were massacred, or killed by crossfire or bombing, as the Germans took Warsaw back street by street.

And: President Komorowski gives thanks to Warsaw Rising insurgents

President Komorowski with veteran Helena Wołłowicz; photo - PAP Bartłomiej Zborowski

President Komorowski was with his aunt and veteran of the 1944 Warsaw Rising Helena Wołłowicz today, to mark the 67th anniversary of the insurgency against Nazi occupation, which began on 1 August 1944.

Bronislaw Komorowski was at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw as part of a day of ceremonies and events to mark the uprising, which was eventually crushed by the Nazis.

Later, President Komorowski led a ceremony at the Warsaw Rising monument outside the parliament building in honour of those fallen 67 years ago.

President Komorowski told the dignitaries and veterans that Poland’s wartime underground state could be an example for his countrymen today.

Komorowski declared that theclandestine state, which included underground courts, universities, theatres and publishing houses, “was a phenomenon then, and today it can also be a source of pride and an important point of reference for contemporary Poles in thinking about their country.”
Komorowski alluded to the parallels between the wartime generation and his own, in their desire for “the reconstruction of the Polish state”.

“So today, here in this place, where the monument to the Polish underground state stands… the Polish president bows his head low, not only before those who created this state, but also before those who fought for this country, and to those who are able to respect the Polish state,” the head of state said.

From YouTube: The Nazis – A Warning From History, The Wild East (Episode 4, Parts 1-4) discussing the Nazi German policies toward Poland during World War II.

Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , ,

Telling the story, supporting the story tellers

From KICKSTARTER: Wisia’s Story, A Documentary project in Warsaw, Poland by Karina Wielgosz & Paul Barry

In 1944, twenty-three year-old Jadwiga (known affectionately to her family as ‘Wisia’) had been living in her native Poland under the yoke of German-occupation for almost five years. Unbeknownst to the invaders, an underground force was mobilizing with the aim of reclaiming at least part of its homeland. The ‘Armia Krajowa’ (‘Home Army’) operated in secret, received its orders from the exiled Polish government and employed the skills of many young people like Wisia to aid them in the uprising.

A select group of youth, including Wisia and her brother, had been secretly selected and trained in running messages and administering medical aid. This group of young civilians supported and sometimes even fought alongside the Armia Krajowa. Their jobs were extremely dangerous but they carried out their missions with remarkable bravery. Our documentary will explore not only the historical details of Wisia’s experience but just as importantly, the composition of her courage, to be able to survive – and ultimately escape – when so many were imprisoned or perished at the hands of these violent intruders.

On the 1st of August 1944, led by the Armia Krajowa, the proud people of Poland united in an attempt to repel the invaders from the city of Warsaw. Through a series of operations and concerted attacks, the civilian-supported Armia Krajowa devastated the German occupiers in the short-term and formed the backbone of what history remembers as The Warsaw Uprising. The uprising’s subsequent failure, eventual slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers and citizens and Hitler’s vindictive destruction of 90% of the city, does nothing to bury the bravery of all who fought during this period for the basic privilege of a peaceful life.

Countless other stories of bravery by soldiers and civilians alike also remain untold, but the selfless actions of one particular twenty-three year-old woman remain a timeless demonstration of heroism in the face of tremendous adversity. This young woman, Wisia, is now a great-grandmother approaching her 90th birthday with a spring in her step and glint in her eye. She is our grandmother and we can no longer allow her sacrifices to remain simply a page on an historical website. For decades her full story has remained untold, but with your backing we will travel back in time with Wisia. She will acquaint us with the locations, walk us through salient events and introduce us to the survivors of such an unforgettable time in her life, in Warsaw, Poland…

Lend your support to the project. They are 65% of the way there. You can help tell this story before it is too late.

Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , ,

For book lovers – new and interesting

The Polish American Encyclopedia, edited by James S. Pula, is now available.

At least nine million Americans trace their roots to Poland, and Polish Americans have contributed greatly to American history and society. During the largest period of immigration to the United States, between 1870 and 1920, more Poles came to the United States than any other national group except Italians. Additional large-scale Polish migration occurred in the wake of World War II and during the period of Solidarity’s rise to prominence.

The encyclopedia features three types of entries: thematic essays, topical entries, and biographical profiles. The essays synthesize existing work to provide interpretations of, and insight into, important aspects of the Polish American experience. The topical entries discuss in detail specific places, events or organizations such as the Polish National Alliance, Polish American Saturday Schools, and the Latimer Massacre, among others. The biographical entries identify Polish Americans who have made significant contributions at the regional or national level either to the history and culture of the United States, or to the development of American Polonia.

[AMAZONPRODUCT=0786433086]

From the Pittsburgh Post Gazette: The Next Page / Pittsburgh doctor, Polish warrior: The Jerzy Einhorn story

A proud old man died the other day and a window on history closed.

Jerzy Einhorn was 92 when he passed away at his Mt. Lebanon home on July 4.

A prominent doctor in his native Poland in the 1960s, he came to the U.S. in 1967 and became an endocrinologist at Montefiore Hospital, where he treated thousands of patients and directed the thyroid screening program. He also established health clinics in Hazelwood and Greenfield and taught at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Einhorn leaves behind a wife and three children from two marriages. He also leaves behind a back story from his youth straight from the movies — a tale full of Nazis, narrow escapes and dangerous liaisons in occupied Poland during World War II.

A Polish cavalry officer, he fought the Germans in 1939 and then served with the Polish underground Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising, a battle that ended with the Nazi annihilation of the city in 1944.

He won military decorations, escaped captivity multiple times, twice crossed the Eastern Front, swam the Vistula River and ended up imprisoned and beaten by the Soviet secret police in 1945.

He lost his father — forced to dig his own grave before being shot — and a sister, sent to a concentration camp with her two children.

His story is one of millions from that time, but unlike many others, he wrote it all down in a memoir, “Recollections of the End of an Era,” published in Polish in 2000 and translated into English in 2005…

[AMAZONPRODUCT=1420803549]

From A Polish Son: Wesley Adamczyk Speaks the Truth about Katyń

Chicago Polish-American author Wesley Adamczyk invited me to his home on July 14, 2011, to see his exhibition. As I make my way in, he advises me to watch out for the electrical cords running to a strategically placed floor lamp in his living room. He has positioned several lamps to shine on his collection of memorabilia and publications related to the Katyń Massacre and the deportation of Poles to Siberia at the beginning of World War II.

“Some of my collection I have displayed on the walls and tables,” he says, “and some things I am going to display through multimedia. This is a display of a performance piece titled Two Christmas Eves,” he indicates, pointing to a poster, “one in Poland shortly before the war, one in Siberia in 1941, after my family and thousands of other Polish people were deported to Siberia in 1940.” The drawings contrast the cultured family life Adamczyk knew as a child with the brutality of the Soviets…

[AMAZONPRODUCT=B004HZAUF4]

From the Cosmopolitan Review: Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love and Fallout, a review by Margaret Butler

Lauren Redniss has written a very modern portrait of this celebrated couple that is a treat to read. From the custom type created by the author to the layout of the sparse text to the illustrations, the author presents a biography that captures not only the linear progression of the lives of these scientific giants, but connects their work to its effects in the world. “Radioactive” is a work of art.

One key to the success of this book is the incorporation of numerous quotes of Marie, Pierre, and others. Actual words help the reader relate to the Curies and to their time. In addition, the accounts and testimonies of other sources linked to the Curies’ work help the reader understand the magnitude of their discoveries. This is especially evident in chapter 5 “Instability of Matter” in which Marie’s thesis that radiation may inhibit malignant cell growth is followed by the 2001 testimony of a cancer patient being treated for Non-Hodgkins lymphoma with a thermoplastic radiation mask. The same chapter included the development of the atom bomb, the Manhattan Project, a copy of declassified FBI files, and the testimony of a Hiroshima survivor.

As the story of Pierre and Marie Curie progresses chronologically through the nine chapters of the book, the author mirrors the characters’ personal and professional lives with other seemingly random events…

One underlying theme of the book is the remarkable partnership of individuals who, working together, discover something new. At the turn of the century, an amazing confluence of scientific discoveries and ideas created an atmosphere where information was shared among scientists. Beginning with Pierre and Marie who never sought a patent for their discoveries, to Marie and Paul Langevin, then to Marie and her daughter Irene, then Irene and her husband Frederic Joliot, etc., these relationships clearly show the benefit of sharing ideas and how those ideas spread with a life of their own throughout the scientific community.

The book spotlights Marie’s great personal strength. As the reader follows Marie’s life, one begins to understand the tremendous challenges she overcame starting with her Polish childhood in Russian-occupied Poland. Her clandestine studies through the secret “Flying University” allowed her to acquire an education so thorough that she could ably compete as one of 23 women of 1800 students attending the Sorbonne. Conducting the physically exhausting work of proving the existence of polonium and radium, and later suffering through radium toxicity did not detract from Marie’s focus on scientific study and the raising of her two daughters…

[AMAZONPRODUCT=0061351326]

From Mary Akers: Radical Gratitude by Andrew Bienkowski and Mary Akers was recently translated into Polish and published as Radykalna Wdzięczność.

Radical Gratitude is both narrative and inspiring practical guidance, telling the story of one family’s survival in Stalinist Siberia. That experience develops into a guide to becoming a person who can give to others. Each chapter details the ways we can achieve radical gratitude (learning to be grateful even for the difficult experiences in life). Andrew Bienkowski has spent more than 40 years as a clinical therapist. At the age of six, he and his family were forced to leave their Polish homeland for Siberia where his grandfather deliberately starved to death so that the women and children might have enough to eat. The years that followed were harrowing and influenced his entire life. After Siberia, the family spent a year in an Iranian refugee camp where Andrew nearly died from dysentery, malaria and malnutrition. Three years in Palestine followed, a year in England, before he finally immigrated to America where he went on to earn a Masters in Clinical Psychology. Mary Akers’ work has appeared in a number of international literary journals, many related to health and healing.

[AMAZONPRODUCT=1741754224]

Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , , , ,

History and top animators

A CGI “Animated History of Poland” produced for the Polish pavilion at EXPO 2010 in Shanghai.

Animated History of Poland [FULL VERSION] from styczek on Vimeo.

The 3D stereo “Animated History of Poland” was prepared by Platige Image animators and directed by Tomek Bagiński. It is one of a few productions done by Platige Image for EXPO exhibition.

Platige and Tomek Bagiński also produced a CGI trailer for one of the world’s top games, Witcher 2, Assassins of Kings.

Poetry, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , , , , , ,

Around the Polish-American writing community

The activity at the Polish American Writers & Editors Facebook page has been wonderful. There are links to book and poetry reviews and blogs, opportunities for writers, excellent analysis and recommendations. I highly recommend that anyone who writes or loves to read, or who has an interest in writing become a member of this group.

Some recent/not-so-recent material:

Andy Golebiowski notes Rita Cosby’s book about her father’s participation in the Polish Underground during WWII is now in paperback and close to becoming a bestseller.

[AMAZONPRODUCT=1439165513]

Linda Ciulik Wisniewski recommends Off Kilter: A Woman’s Journey to Peace With Scoliosis, Her Mother, and Her Polish Heritage by Linda C. Wisniewski.

Even before she was diagnosed with scoliosis at thirteen, Linda C. Wisniewski felt off kilter. Born to an emotionally abusive father and long-suffering mother in the Polish Catholic community of upstate New York, Linda twisted herself into someone always trying to please. Balance would elude her until she learned to stretch her Self as well as her spine. Only by accepting her physical deformity, her emotionally unavailable mother, and her heritage would she finally find a life that fit.

[AMAZONPRODUCT=1597190128]

Krysia Styrna points to Polish Writing which features Polish literature in translation. Recently linked translations include Kordian by Juliusz Słowacki as translated by Gerard T. Kapolka and available on-line through Scribd, and Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk as translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.

[AMAZONPRODUCT= 8086264351]

Dr. John Guzlowski discusses the New England Review’s article by Ellen Hinsey on the plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and others last year in the Katyn Forest. The article talks extensively and sympathetically about the effect of the crash on Poland. See Hinsey – Death in the Forest.

He notes Polish American writer Danusha Goska is travelling in Poland and posting Facebook and blog updates about her travels at Bieganski the Blog.

Also noted, Daiva Markelis powerful book White Field, Black Sheep: A Lithuanian-American Life published by the Univ of Chicago Press about growing up Lithuanian-American. Her experiences in many ways parallel those of people who grew up Polish-American and the children of DPs. Read her recent interview at The Smoking Poet, Talking to Daiva Markelis

[AMAZONPRODUCT= 0226505308]

Danuta Hinc provides a preview of her newest work, a short story entitled In the Forest of Angels. The story is inspired by real events and all the characters in the story are based on real people — her grandparents, mother, and herself.

Pol-Am writer Oriana Ivy continues her writing (absolutely fantastic and a regular read — an inspired and inquisitive poet) with Persephone and Aphrodite. There are many levels, but in short, the process of leaving Poland and coming to America, trauma, finding, and rebirth. She begins with her poem Eurydice In Milwaukee and concludes with Persephone’s Kitchen.

This poem is not about my loss of Warsaw so much as about my loss of America. I mean the idealized, imaginary America in my mind after I arrived in real America. I was seventeen. That combination – loss of both Poland and America – was to be the first in the series of my “Persephone experiences.” (Eurydice can be seen as a version of Persephone.)

In my early teens, in Warsaw, I fell in love with Greek mythology. I thought it was possible to choose your own special goddess. A fierce young intellectual, I longed for Athena at my side – Athena the super-intelligent, with her brilliant strategies and unfailing guidance and protection of heroes. Now and then I also longed for Aphrodite to lend me her charms and help me in matters of love, but with the understanding that this was a secondary goddess. As my personal goddess, I chose Athena.

Soon enough I learned that you do not choose your god or goddess. Life (or call it fate, or circumstances), in combination with your deep self, chooses for you. Past the age of seventeen and a half, the only goddess I identified with was Persephone…

There is tons more of course… all carrying you into a world of writing set apart, yet reflecting who we are in all its rootedness, shadows, and splendor.