Christmas ended the period of fasting, silence, and reflection, and began the time of joy that followed the birth of Christ. The atmosphere of Christmas, its traditions and customs, family meetings, and common carol-singing filled almost every old Polish manor house. Many Christian homes also celebrated All Souls’ Day and observed New Year’s ceremonies, which…
Passionate, volatile, demagogic and captivating: Maurycy Mochnacki both co-creates and embodies the model Polish Romantic hero. It seems as if he descended from the pages of the poems and novels that he praised and promoted. And yet he lived, burned and suffered a defeat in the most real of stories. by Wojciech Stanisławski He…
The double attack on Poland by Nazi Germany and the USSR in September 1939 led to the effective dissolution of the Polish state. Although Poland lost its sovereignty, its legal authorities continued to function, organising the Polish armed forces in France and later in Great Britain. Under these circumstances, the primary aim of the Polish…
Tadeusz Kantor was a Polish multidisciplinary artist whose imagination transcended the confines of the canvas. His art surpassed painting to fully blossom on the theater stage. “The Dead Class” shocked audiences worldwide, and Kantor’s happenings constantly questioned the boundaries of art. From the humblest of materials – objects found in garbage dumps, mannequins, fragments of…
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…
