Operation Kutschera

On 1 February 1944, the Polish resistance carried out the assassination of Franz Kutschera, known as ‘the executioner of Warsaw’. The assassination of this SS officer and police commander in the Warsaw District of the General Government was one of the most spectacular operations in the history of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), because never…


The Warsaw Confederation (1573)

The declaration of the Warsaw Confederation was approved on January 28, 1573, at the Convocation Sejm held in Warsaw after the heirless death of King  Zygmunt II August (Sigismund II Augustus)  and prior to the first free election of a monarch. The Sejm was convoked in order to lay down the principles for electing the…


The voices of the survivors are the most important

Auschwitz-Birkenau is the world’s largest Jewish, Polish and Roma cemetery. This is neither rhetoric nor poetry. For centuries, the earth will continue to hide here the ashes from the crematoria and bits of unburnt bones. It will be saturated with human blood and fat. Literally. by Marek Zając   That’s how one should see it….


Parliamentary resolution regarding dethronement of Nicholas I

In 1815 the Congress of Vienna, convened after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, decided to create a Kingdom of Poland. Through the person of the Tsar, it was joined in a personal union with Russia. The Tsar and King in a single person, Alexander I, guaranteed the new Kingdom its own constitution, along with a…


Manifesto of the Interim National Government 1863

On January 22, 1863, the Polish ‘Central National Committee’ proclaimed the outbreak of an uprising and issued a manifesto whereby it proclaimed itself the Interim National Government. The document appealed to all the inhabitants of the former Polish-Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita (Commonwealth), within its pre-partition borders, to fight against tsarist rule for liberty. The manifesto heralded the…


Paweł Edmund Strzelecki: The discoverer of Australia’s highest peak

He carried out the first measurements in Australia, discovered the Snowy Mountains, the highest range of the Great Dividing Range, and named the highest peak in Australia Mount Kosciuszko in honour of the Polish general. Meet Count Paweł Edmund Strzelecki. by Piotr Bejrowski   On 15 February 1840, Paweł Edmund Strzelecki became the first person…


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