An effective polio vaccine, discovered in 1950, saved the health and lives of hundreds of thousands of children around the world. Born in 1916, the Polish doctor, virologist and immunologist Hilary Koprowski belonged to the elite “Pasteur club”, as the group of eminent vaccinologists working on new vaccines was called. by Piotr Bejrowski Despite…
In the summer and autumn of 1942, in the General Government (GG), the Germans carried out mass deportations of the Jewish population to extermination camps. These actions, code-named Operation ‘Reinhardt’, aimed to exterminate all the Jews from that area. The few who managed to escape deportation sought refuge on the so-called Aryan side. In these…
St. Andrew’s Day falls on November 30, but in Old Poland the night before (St. Andrew’s Night) was considered a time of magic and fortune telling. In this period, it was believed that everything predicted on this night would come true. As a result, in nearly every noble manor and peasant cottage, fortune-telling sessions were…
One of the several classic ‘Polish insurgences’: armed, bloody and lost. Apart from the romantic legend around it, it is distinguished by the fact that the episode lasting a year was unusually effective in unsettling things as they were. After the lost uprising, two paths of development, possible before, were not available to the Poles…
Known and respected in Poland and abroad, she was called the Polish Mother Teresa. For more than 42 years she treated leprosy patients in Uganda, becoming one of the most eminent specialists in this field. She converted a rural leprosarium without any electricity into a modern medical centre. by Jan Hlebowicz Even as a…
Władysław Konopczyński was a great figure in Polish historical science. Polish culture owes monumental works to him, for whom archives and libraries throughout Europe had no secrets. He led an interesting and somewhat controversial life across several epochs. by Tomasz Siewierski Warsaw-Lwów beginnings It seemed that Władysław, born in Warsaw in 1880, would spend…
