When the Germans invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, these two men called upon Polish Jews to fight. Then they attacked Stalin and paid the ultimate price. Up to this day, the deaths of Wiktor Alter and Henryk Erlich, leaders and activists of the General Jewish Labour Bund, a Polish Jewish socialist party, are among…
Politics and culture go their own ways. Fragmented Italy, plunged into feuds, gave the world the Renaissance. Spain suffered defeat after defeat in the 17th century, but was in its golden age in the field of literature and art. At the end of the reign of Jan III Sobieski, the Polish-Lithuanian state fell into utter…
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…
Until recently, it was believed that Mieszko I, Poland’s first ruler, had minted the kingdom’s first coin, however, this claim has since been refuted. Mieszko’s denarius was indeed minted by a Mieszko, although in fact it was Mieszko II, the grandson of the founder of the Polish state. by Wojciech Kalwat If we are…
The course of the boundary between Moldavia and the Polish Crown was, on the surface at least, quite clear, especially in comparison with a fuzzier Polish-Ottoman demarcation further to the east. For most of its course, it ran along the rivers of White Cheremush, Kolachin and the Dniester, extending from the hilly and forested landscape…
On 13 November 1939, the Union of Armed Struggle, or ZWZ [Związek Walki Zbrojnej] was established at the newly established seat of the Polish government-in-exile in Paris. The Union was the first underground army in what would soon be occupied Europe. The task of the Union was to fight the two occupying forces. When thinking…
