In 1916, it was the third year of the Great War, and there was no end in sight to the military struggle. All sides of the conflict were looking for new allies, although it was not so much about gaining more political supporters as it was about, above all, gaining more soldiers. For soldiers were…
When Czesław Milosz arrived in Warsaw in 1981, fresh from winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, one of the visits he made, was to a private apartment, to meet with the people responsible for bringing his poems to Polish readers. From 1951, when Milosz had refused to return to Stalinist Poland, a ban had been…
“I am mostly scared of the moment when I feel that I have planted all the trees or I have written all the pieces, but I am far from this – I still have plans,” he stated on his 80th birthday. Krzysztof Penderecki, one of the world’s greatest contemporary composers, died on 29 March at…
The ordeal of Polish Army officers, policemen, prison and forest guards, intelligence and counter-intelligence agents as well as Polish administrative staff in the Easter Borderlands began on 17 September 1939. It was then that the Red Army invaded Poland, belatedly implementing the arrangements of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939. Soviet captivity awaited around…
1. It happened 70 years ago. They were tied up and killed with a shot to the back of the head, as there was less blood spilt this way. Later on the bodies – still with the buttons of their uniforms depicting eagles on – were placed in deep ditches. Here, in Katyn, four thousand…
Over the course of history, societies have experienced ongoing waves of epidemics and pandemics of infectious diseases. Poland has not been excluded in this. These bouts of sickness did not only impact history but also the development of medicine, the functioning of state institutions and the nation’s way of life. by Michał Szukała Throughout human…
