Polish Greatness

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Polish WWII airman dies, aged 100
08.08.2018 12:01
A Polish airman who took part in the 1940 Battle of Britain has died at the age of 100, officials have said.
1bccac08-00de-46cb-9ae4-a2bf86e9c364.file
Photo: Deltadam/pixabay.com/CC0 Creative Commons

During World War II, Captain Tadeusz Terlikowski was a member of the British Royal Air Force’s 303 fighter squadron, whose Polish pilots gained a reputation for courage and determination.

Terlikowski also took part in the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. After the war, he settled in the United States.

Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Culture Minister Piotr Gliński said Terlikowski was “one of the last members of 303 Squadron, who fought for their homeland’s freedom at the side of the Allies.”

Gliński added: “It is our duty to save their story and heroism from oblivion.”

The Battle of Britain is the name given to the World War II air campaign waged to defend Britain from the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) during the summer and autumn of 1940. It has been described as the first major military campaign to be fought entirely by air forces.


Polish WWII airman dies, aged 100
 
BC: Marie Skłodowska-Curie named the most influential woman in history
Zrzut%20ekranu%202018-08-15%20o%2019.59.54.png
Photo: Fotolia
Marie Skłodowska-Curie, physicist, chemist and two-time Nobel Prize winner, was voted the most influential woman in history in the British BBC History poll. Curie changed the world not once but twice, the justification reads.

Skłodowska-Curie topped the poll, ahead of Afro-American human rights activist Rose Parks and British suffragette movement leader Emmeline Pankhurst.

According to the poll results, the Polish scientist founded the new science of radioactivity - even the word was invented by her - and her discoveries launched effective cures for cancer

"Curie boasts an extraordinary array of achievements. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, first female professor at the University of Paris, and the first person – note the use of person there, not woman – to win a second Nobel Prize" - says Patricia Fara, president of the British Society for the History of Science, who nominated the Polish-born scientist.

Fara adds that the odds were always stacked against Skłodowska-Curie. In Poland her patriotic family suffered under a Russian regime. In France "she was regarded with suspicion as a foreigner - and of course, wherever she went, she was discriminated against as a woman".

According to the poll results, "Marie Curie was a woman of action as well as enormous intellect". During the First World War, she helped to equip ambulances with x-ray equipment, and often drove them to the front line herself.

According to Olivette Otele from Bath Spa University, "Marie Skłodowska Curie and Rosa Parks were worlds apart as far as class and race were concerned. However, these two women’s stories bear an interesting resemblance".

"Education changed their trajectories as 20th-century women in societies dominated by men. They both fought against prejudice and successfully carved out their places as committed educators" - Otele says.

Others who have made the list include mathematician Ada Lovelace, Florence Nightingale considered the creator of modern nursing, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Virgin Mary, writer Jane Austen, Princess Diana and the first woman pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Amelia Earhart.

The list of one hundred women was created based on the nominations submitted sent by 10 British historians, each of whom nominated 10 candidates. The readers of the magazine ranked the candidates.

BBC: Marie Skłodowska-Curie named the most influential woman in history
 
03.08.2018 change 03.08.2018

  • ©
Astronomers have found radioactive molecules in the interstellar space
Zrzut%20ekranu%202018-08-01%20o%2023.58.38.png
Composite image of CK Vulpeculae, the remains of a double-star collision. ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), T. Kamiński; Gemini, NOAO/AURA/NSF; NRAO/AUI/NSF, B. Saxton
Thanks to the ALMA and NOEMA instruments, an international research team led by a Polish scientist detected radioactive molecules in the interstellar space outside the Solar System for the first time, reports the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Tomasz Kamiński (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, USA), together with his team, detected a source of radioactive 26-aluminum isotope. This radioactive nuclide occurs in the interstellar space in 26-aluminum monofluoride molecules. It was detected in the matter surrounding CK Vulpeculae, the remains of a stellar collision that happened several hundred years ago.

"We are observing the guts of a star torn apart by a collision three centuries ago. This first observation of this isotope in a star-like object is also important in the broader context of galactic chemical evolution. This is the first time an active producer of the radioactive nuclide aluminum-26 has been directly identified" - explains Kamiński.

CK Vulpeculae was first seen in 1670 as a bright, red "new star" visible with the naked eye (now astronomers call this type of object a red nova). Gdańsk astronomer Johannes Hevelius observed it. But it quickly faded and now powerful telescopes are needed to see what remains after the collision of two stars that happened almost 350 years ago.

Detection of molecules containing 26-aluminum was possible thanks to the observations on millimeter wavelengths, in which these molecules leave a distinctive "fingerprint" (spectral lines). It is a process know as rotational transition.

26-aluminum is an unstable form (isotope) of aluminium. It has 13 protons and 13 neutrons in its atomic nucleus, one neutron less than stable 27-aluminum. After radioactive decay, 26-aluminum becomes stable 26-magnesium.

26-aluminum does not occur on Earth, which is why it is difficult to see its exact spectrum in laboratory experiments. Therefore, the analyses were based on laboratory measurements of a stable version of 27-aluminum monofluoride.

The observations were carried out with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) radio telescopes.

26-aluminum was detected before in space outside the Solar System as part of the observations made at gamma-ray wavelengths. Researchers determined that in the Milky Way it was present in the amount of about two solar masses. But the process that could produce 26-aluminum and its origins were unknown.

The discovery that 26-aluminum was formed as a result of a merger of two relatively low-mass stars, as was the case with CK Vulpeculae, sheds new light on this issue. The amount of 26-aluminum resulting from the CK Vulpeculae collision is about one quarter mass of Pluto. And because objects of this type are rare, they are probably not the only source of 26-aluminum in the Milky Way. Further research could allow to better understand radioactive molecules found in space.

In addition to Tomasz Kamiński, the research team had one more Polish member, Romuald Tylenda from the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center PAS.

Astronomers have found radioactive molecules in the interstellar space
 
Considering the mockery, and slander / libel against Poles I think it's necessary.

Has any ethnic population been more scapegoated, and slandered?

There's so many negative stereotypes upon Poles, like dumb Polak, thieves, criminals, drunks, prostitutes, weak at war, using horses in WW2, starting WW2 in Bromberg Massacre, being the land of the Holocaust, being Nazi collaborators.

Most of these are downright slander / libel, or and many others are extreme exaggerations.

.1.) Are Poles dumb?
Poland in the Renaissance was the European leader in science, even the Scientific Revolution came from Poland thanks to Copernicus, and Albert Brudzewski.

Polish Americans scored a massive 109 IQ.
While Poland's IQ is considered to be 99, this is by no means low.
The PISA scores of Poland are high, the literacy rates of Poland are high, and Poland wins many intellectual competitions like the IBM Battle of the Brains Contest, the University Rover Challenge, the Google Online Marketing Challenge, Google Code Jam, among others.

So, no I wouldn't say Poles are particularly dumb.,

2.) Thieves, or criminals?

Poland was the first European country to successfully hold off slavery.

Poland had no involved in Colonialism, nor the Atlantic Slave Trade of thievery, or Criminality.

As for common criminals?

Poland's murder rate is now lower than the EU average.

There's an extreme exaggeration of Polish as being a particularly criminal population in UK media, and British circles.

But, Poles are estimated to have 6,700 or so criminals yearly, as opposed to 1.19 million criminals yearly in the UK.

This would support that 0.5% of criminals in the UK were Polish, while over 1.0% of the UK was Polish.

So, actually Poles are underrepresented in crime in the UK.

3.) Drunks?

This map shows that Poles were less likely to be diagnosed with alcoholism than most of Northern Europe.

pca_sociocultural_plots.png


4.) Prostitutes?

Poles have one of the latest ages for losing virginity in Europe.

While, there might be some Polish prostitutes.

Most Polish girls are if anything more prude than most of Europe.

5.) Weak at war?

I don't think anyone has won more battles when outnumbered than Poles.

Quite a few Polish battles come to mind, the Battle of Hodow, Battle of Klushino, Battle of Kircholm, Battle of Lubieszow, Battle of Trembowla, battle of fuengirola etc.

6.( While it's true that Poles had Horse units in WW2.

So did everyone else except Great Britain.

Actually the Nazis, and Soviets each had many times more Horses than Poland.

So, why do many anti-Polish Nazis, and anti-Polish Soviets ignore these facts?

7.) Bromberg Massacre starting before WW2 is not historically accepted.

But, many Nazis, or German sympathizers try, none the less.

I think the fact that Nazi Germany had claimed a Bromberg Massacre was going on since March of 1939, but invaded Czechoslovakia in March of 1939 instead of Poland says all that needs to be said.

8.) While it's true that Poland is where many Concentration Camps are located.

The Nazi Germans had annexed this land.

Furthermore Nazi Germany first put Poles into Auschwitz, rather than Jews.

Up to 100's of thousands of Poles passed through the Concentration Camps, and 100's of thousands of more Poles were killed in Nazi massacres, including Wola Massacre, the Ponary Massace, Operation Tannenberg etc.

9.) Poland was the first nation to fight the Nazis.

After the Nazis had invaded, Poland had the biggest anti-Nazi resistance in occupied Europe.

Poles had the highest number of Righteous Among the Nations risk their lives to save Holocaust victim Jews, some serious names come to mind like Eugene Lazowski, Henryk Slawik, or Irena Sendler.
(This is in spite of the fact that Poland was the only nation in occupied Europe that a death penalty was created for aiding Holocaust Jews.

Zegota was an entire Polish organization which had dedicate their time, lives, and resources to aiding Holocaust victim Jews.

With that said, Poles like all populations of Europe had some Nazi collaborators.

But, there's no recorded Polish Nazi SS units in Europe.

Furthermore even the Jews had some Nazi collaborators.
Actually the Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum who lived his last days in the Nazi controlled Warsaw Ghetto, had admitted that Jewish Nazi collaborators of the Jewish Ghetto Police, were more brutal than Polish Nazi collaborators of the Polish Blue Police.



99 is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. ONE POINT off the norm? lol!


And I've never heard anyone say anything negative about Poland when it comes to warfare. Sandwiched between Germany and Russia is not a fun place to be.
 
30.07.2018 change 30.07.2018

  • ©
Polish Wavy in the lead of Big Data projects in the finals of Imagine Cup 2018
Zrzut%20ekranu%202018-07-30%20o%2000.34.44.png
Photo:

press materials
The innovative locator for recreational divers designed by the Wavy team from Lodz University of Technology and Warsaw University of Technology was one of the top six student projects in the Big Data category during the world finals of Microsoft Imagine Cup 2018, which took place in the U.S.

Several thousand teams from around the world entered the Microsoft Imagine Cup competition this year. 49 projects advanced to the finals in Seattle. Poland was represented by the Wavy team selected in the national finals, composed mainly of Lodz University of Technology students, supported by their colleague from Warsaw University of Technology.

The students have developed a locator to increase the safety of recreational divers. It allows to monitor diver`s position using a smartphone and displays the current dive depth; it also allows the diver to send SOS signal by to the person using the app.

The students used Big Data algorithms in their project to expand the locator`s functionality, for example by suggesting routes and points of interest to divers, as well as predicting threats.

This additional advantage of the solution was appreciated by the competition jurors, says the team mentor, Dr. Jarosław Andrzejczak from the Institute of Information Technology, Lodz University of Technology.

The Polish project was among the six nominees for the Imagine Cup Awards in the Big Data category. Polish students competed with teams from the U.S., Malaysia, Germany, India and New Zealand. However, the students did not manage to win a special prize; they also failed to get to the top three who would fight for the Microsoft Imagine Cup main prize.

But according to Dr Andrzejczak, the participation in this elite competition was already a success. "Competing with the world`s best teams is a success. Wavy team had great presentations, the level of which did not differ from the best ones" - the team mentor emphasizes.

In his opinion, another success - perhaps not a very tangible one, but giving a lot of satisfaction - are positive comments and reviews from jurors, Microsoft employees, and media from different countries.

Polish Wavy in the lead of Big Data projects in the finals of Imagine Cup 2018
 
Madame Curie------is THE EXCEPTION TO THE RULE-----as far as polish ladies go----HOWEVER --I
will give Polish ladies another LAUD----they tolerate-
ewwww... polish men
 
Considering the mockery, and slander / libel against Poles I think it's necessary.

Has any ethnic population been more scapegoated, and slandered?

There's so many negative stereotypes upon Poles, like dumb Polak, thieves, criminals, drunks, prostitutes, weak at war, using horses in WW2, starting WW2 in Bromberg Massacre, being the land of the Holocaust, being Nazi collaborators.

Most of these are downright slander / libel, or and many others are extreme exaggerations.

.1.) Are Poles dumb?
Poland in the Renaissance was the European leader in science, even the Scientific Revolution came from Poland thanks to Copernicus, and Albert Brudzewski.

Polish Americans scored a massive 109 IQ.
While Poland's IQ is considered to be 99, this is by no means low.
The PISA scores of Poland are high, the literacy rates of Poland are high, and Poland wins many intellectual competitions like the IBM Battle of the Brains Contest, the University Rover Challenge, the Google Online Marketing Challenge, Google Code Jam, among others.

So, no I wouldn't say Poles are particularly dumb.,

2.) Thieves, or criminals?

Poland was the first European country to successfully hold off slavery.

Poland had no involved in Colonialism, nor the Atlantic Slave Trade of thievery, or Criminality.

As for common criminals?

Poland's murder rate is now lower than the EU average.

There's an extreme exaggeration of Polish as being a particularly criminal population in UK media, and British circles.

But, Poles are estimated to have 6,700 or so criminals yearly, as opposed to 1.19 million criminals yearly in the UK.

This would support that 0.5% of criminals in the UK were Polish, while over 1.0% of the UK was Polish.

So, actually Poles are underrepresented in crime in the UK.

3.) Drunks?

This map shows that Poles were less likely to be diagnosed with alcoholism than most of Northern Europe.

pca_sociocultural_plots.png


4.) Prostitutes?

Poles have one of the latest ages for losing virginity in Europe.

While, there might be some Polish prostitutes.

Most Polish girls are if anything more prude than most of Europe.

5.) Weak at war?

I don't think anyone has won more battles when outnumbered than Poles.

Quite a few Polish battles come to mind, the Battle of Hodow, Battle of Klushino, Battle of Kircholm, Battle of Lubieszow, Battle of Trembowla, battle of fuengirola etc.

6.( While it's true that Poles had Horse units in WW2.

So did everyone else except Great Britain.

Actually the Nazis, and Soviets each had many times more Horses than Poland.

So, why do many anti-Polish Nazis, and anti-Polish Soviets ignore these facts?

7.) Bromberg Massacre starting before WW2 is not historically accepted.

But, many Nazis, or German sympathizers try, none the less.

I think the fact that Nazi Germany had claimed a Bromberg Massacre was going on since March of 1939, but invaded Czechoslovakia in March of 1939 instead of Poland says all that needs to be said.

8.) While it's true that Poland is where many Concentration Camps are located.

The Nazi Germans had annexed this land.

Furthermore Nazi Germany first put Poles into Auschwitz, rather than Jews.

Up to 100's of thousands of Poles passed through the Concentration Camps, and 100's of thousands of more Poles were killed in Nazi massacres, including Wola Massacre, the Ponary Massace, Operation Tannenberg etc.

9.) Poland was the first nation to fight the Nazis.

After the Nazis had invaded, Poland had the biggest anti-Nazi resistance in occupied Europe.

Poles had the highest number of Righteous Among the Nations risk their lives to save Holocaust victim Jews, some serious names come to mind like Eugene Lazowski, Henryk Slawik, or Irena Sendler.
(This is in spite of the fact that Poland was the only nation in occupied Europe that a death penalty was created for aiding Holocaust Jews.

Zegota was an entire Polish organization which had dedicate their time, lives, and resources to aiding Holocaust victim Jews.

With that said, Poles like all populations of Europe had some Nazi collaborators.

But, there's no recorded Polish Nazi SS units in Europe.

Furthermore even the Jews had some Nazi collaborators.
Actually the Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum who lived his last days in the Nazi controlled Warsaw Ghetto, had admitted that Jewish Nazi collaborators of the Jewish Ghetto Police, were more brutal than Polish Nazi collaborators of the Polish Blue Police.



99 is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. ONE POINT off the norm? lol!


And I've never heard anyone say anything negative about Poland when it comes to warfare. Sandwiched between Germany and Russia is not a fun place to be.

1 point off the norm of the UK, the average IQ worldwide is more like 90 according to Lynn, and Rindermann.
 
Considering the mockery, and slander / libel against Poles I think it's necessary.

Has any ethnic population been more scapegoated, and slandered?

There's so many negative stereotypes upon Poles, like dumb Polak, thieves, criminals, drunks, prostitutes, weak at war, using horses in WW2, starting WW2 in Bromberg Massacre, being the land of the Holocaust, being Nazi collaborators.

Most of these are downright slander / libel, or and many others are extreme exaggerations.

.1.) Are Poles dumb?
Poland in the Renaissance was the European leader in science, even the Scientific Revolution came from Poland thanks to Copernicus, and Albert Brudzewski.

Polish Americans scored a massive 109 IQ.
While Poland's IQ is considered to be 99, this is by no means low.
The PISA scores of Poland are high, the literacy rates of Poland are high, and Poland wins many intellectual competitions like the IBM Battle of the Brains Contest, the University Rover Challenge, the Google Online Marketing Challenge, Google Code Jam, among others.

So, no I wouldn't say Poles are particularly dumb.,

2.) Thieves, or criminals?

Poland was the first European country to successfully hold off slavery.

Poland had no involved in Colonialism, nor the Atlantic Slave Trade of thievery, or Criminality.

As for common criminals?

Poland's murder rate is now lower than the EU average.

There's an extreme exaggeration of Polish as being a particularly criminal population in UK media, and British circles.

But, Poles are estimated to have 6,700 or so criminals yearly, as opposed to 1.19 million criminals yearly in the UK.

This would support that 0.5% of criminals in the UK were Polish, while over 1.0% of the UK was Polish.

So, actually Poles are underrepresented in crime in the UK.

3.) Drunks?

This map shows that Poles were less likely to be diagnosed with alcoholism than most of Northern Europe.

pca_sociocultural_plots.png


4.) Prostitutes?

Poles have one of the latest ages for losing virginity in Europe.

While, there might be some Polish prostitutes.

Most Polish girls are if anything more prude than most of Europe.

5.) Weak at war?

I don't think anyone has won more battles when outnumbered than Poles.

Quite a few Polish battles come to mind, the Battle of Hodow, Battle of Klushino, Battle of Kircholm, Battle of Lubieszow, Battle of Trembowla, battle of fuengirola etc.

6.( While it's true that Poles had Horse units in WW2.

So did everyone else except Great Britain.

Actually the Nazis, and Soviets each had many times more Horses than Poland.

So, why do many anti-Polish Nazis, and anti-Polish Soviets ignore these facts?

7.) Bromberg Massacre starting before WW2 is not historically accepted.

But, many Nazis, or German sympathizers try, none the less.

I think the fact that Nazi Germany had claimed a Bromberg Massacre was going on since March of 1939, but invaded Czechoslovakia in March of 1939 instead of Poland says all that needs to be said.

8.) While it's true that Poland is where many Concentration Camps are located.

The Nazi Germans had annexed this land.

Furthermore Nazi Germany first put Poles into Auschwitz, rather than Jews.

Up to 100's of thousands of Poles passed through the Concentration Camps, and 100's of thousands of more Poles were killed in Nazi massacres, including Wola Massacre, the Ponary Massace, Operation Tannenberg etc.

9.) Poland was the first nation to fight the Nazis.

After the Nazis had invaded, Poland had the biggest anti-Nazi resistance in occupied Europe.

Poles had the highest number of Righteous Among the Nations risk their lives to save Holocaust victim Jews, some serious names come to mind like Eugene Lazowski, Henryk Slawik, or Irena Sendler.
(This is in spite of the fact that Poland was the only nation in occupied Europe that a death penalty was created for aiding Holocaust Jews.

Zegota was an entire Polish organization which had dedicate their time, lives, and resources to aiding Holocaust victim Jews.

With that said, Poles like all populations of Europe had some Nazi collaborators.

But, there's no recorded Polish Nazi SS units in Europe.

Furthermore even the Jews had some Nazi collaborators.
Actually the Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum who lived his last days in the Nazi controlled Warsaw Ghetto, had admitted that Jewish Nazi collaborators of the Jewish Ghetto Police, were more brutal than Polish Nazi collaborators of the Polish Blue Police.



99 is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. ONE POINT off the norm? lol!


And I've never heard anyone say anything negative about Poland when it comes to warfare. Sandwiched between Germany and Russia is not a fun place to be.

1 point off the norm of the UK, the average IQ worldwide is more like 90 according to Lynn, and Rindermann.


I've also never heard of the drunken pole stereotype. And I live in an area that got a fair amount of Eastern European immigration.
 
Considering the mockery, and slander / libel against Poles I think it's necessary.

Has any ethnic population been more scapegoated, and slandered?

There's so many negative stereotypes upon Poles, like dumb Polak, thieves, criminals, drunks, prostitutes, weak at war, using horses in WW2, starting WW2 in Bromberg Massacre, being the land of the Holocaust, being Nazi collaborators.

Most of these are downright slander / libel, or and many others are extreme exaggerations.

.1.) Are Poles dumb?
Poland in the Renaissance was the European leader in science, even the Scientific Revolution came from Poland thanks to Copernicus, and Albert Brudzewski.

Polish Americans scored a massive 109 IQ.
While Poland's IQ is considered to be 99, this is by no means low.
The PISA scores of Poland are high, the literacy rates of Poland are high, and Poland wins many intellectual competitions like the IBM Battle of the Brains Contest, the University Rover Challenge, the Google Online Marketing Challenge, Google Code Jam, among others.

So, no I wouldn't say Poles are particularly dumb.,

2.) Thieves, or criminals?

Poland was the first European country to successfully hold off slavery.

Poland had no involved in Colonialism, nor the Atlantic Slave Trade of thievery, or Criminality.

As for common criminals?

Poland's murder rate is now lower than the EU average.

There's an extreme exaggeration of Polish as being a particularly criminal population in UK media, and British circles.

But, Poles are estimated to have 6,700 or so criminals yearly, as opposed to 1.19 million criminals yearly in the UK.

This would support that 0.5% of criminals in the UK were Polish, while over 1.0% of the UK was Polish.

So, actually Poles are underrepresented in crime in the UK.

3.) Drunks?

This map shows that Poles were less likely to be diagnosed with alcoholism than most of Northern Europe.

pca_sociocultural_plots.png


4.) Prostitutes?

Poles have one of the latest ages for losing virginity in Europe.

While, there might be some Polish prostitutes.

Most Polish girls are if anything more prude than most of Europe.

5.) Weak at war?

I don't think anyone has won more battles when outnumbered than Poles.

Quite a few Polish battles come to mind, the Battle of Hodow, Battle of Klushino, Battle of Kircholm, Battle of Lubieszow, Battle of Trembowla, battle of fuengirola etc.

6.( While it's true that Poles had Horse units in WW2.

So did everyone else except Great Britain.

Actually the Nazis, and Soviets each had many times more Horses than Poland.

So, why do many anti-Polish Nazis, and anti-Polish Soviets ignore these facts?

7.) Bromberg Massacre starting before WW2 is not historically accepted.

But, many Nazis, or German sympathizers try, none the less.

I think the fact that Nazi Germany had claimed a Bromberg Massacre was going on since March of 1939, but invaded Czechoslovakia in March of 1939 instead of Poland says all that needs to be said.

8.) While it's true that Poland is where many Concentration Camps are located.

The Nazi Germans had annexed this land.

Furthermore Nazi Germany first put Poles into Auschwitz, rather than Jews.

Up to 100's of thousands of Poles passed through the Concentration Camps, and 100's of thousands of more Poles were killed in Nazi massacres, including Wola Massacre, the Ponary Massace, Operation Tannenberg etc.

9.) Poland was the first nation to fight the Nazis.

After the Nazis had invaded, Poland had the biggest anti-Nazi resistance in occupied Europe.

Poles had the highest number of Righteous Among the Nations risk their lives to save Holocaust victim Jews, some serious names come to mind like Eugene Lazowski, Henryk Slawik, or Irena Sendler.
(This is in spite of the fact that Poland was the only nation in occupied Europe that a death penalty was created for aiding Holocaust Jews.

Zegota was an entire Polish organization which had dedicate their time, lives, and resources to aiding Holocaust victim Jews.

With that said, Poles like all populations of Europe had some Nazi collaborators.

But, there's no recorded Polish Nazi SS units in Europe.

Furthermore even the Jews had some Nazi collaborators.
Actually the Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum who lived his last days in the Nazi controlled Warsaw Ghetto, had admitted that Jewish Nazi collaborators of the Jewish Ghetto Police, were more brutal than Polish Nazi collaborators of the Polish Blue Police.



99 is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. ONE POINT off the norm? lol!


And I've never heard anyone say anything negative about Poland when it comes to warfare. Sandwiched between Germany and Russia is not a fun place to be.

1 point off the norm of the UK, the average IQ worldwide is more like 90 according to Lynn, and Rindermann.


I've also never heard of the drunken pole stereotype. And I live in an area that got a fair amount of Eastern European immigration.

for the drunken pole stereotype----READ SEMI AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVELS BY AMERICAN
POLISH WRITERS.
 
Considering the mockery, and slander / libel against Poles I think it's necessary.

Has any ethnic population been more scapegoated, and slandered?

There's so many negative stereotypes upon Poles, like dumb Polak, thieves, criminals, drunks, prostitutes, weak at war, using horses in WW2, starting WW2 in Bromberg Massacre, being the land of the Holocaust, being Nazi collaborators.

Most of these are downright slander / libel, or and many others are extreme exaggerations.

.1.) Are Poles dumb?
Poland in the Renaissance was the European leader in science, even the Scientific Revolution came from Poland thanks to Copernicus, and Albert Brudzewski.

Polish Americans scored a massive 109 IQ.
While Poland's IQ is considered to be 99, this is by no means low.
The PISA scores of Poland are high, the literacy rates of Poland are high, and Poland wins many intellectual competitions like the IBM Battle of the Brains Contest, the University Rover Challenge, the Google Online Marketing Challenge, Google Code Jam, among others.

So, no I wouldn't say Poles are particularly dumb.,

2.) Thieves, or criminals?

Poland was the first European country to successfully hold off slavery.

Poland had no involved in Colonialism, nor the Atlantic Slave Trade of thievery, or Criminality.

As for common criminals?

Poland's murder rate is now lower than the EU average.

There's an extreme exaggeration of Polish as being a particularly criminal population in UK media, and British circles.

But, Poles are estimated to have 6,700 or so criminals yearly, as opposed to 1.19 million criminals yearly in the UK.

This would support that 0.5% of criminals in the UK were Polish, while over 1.0% of the UK was Polish.

So, actually Poles are underrepresented in crime in the UK.

3.) Drunks?

This map shows that Poles were less likely to be diagnosed with alcoholism than most of Northern Europe.

pca_sociocultural_plots.png


4.) Prostitutes?

Poles have one of the latest ages for losing virginity in Europe.

While, there might be some Polish prostitutes.

Most Polish girls are if anything more prude than most of Europe.

5.) Weak at war?

I don't think anyone has won more battles when outnumbered than Poles.

Quite a few Polish battles come to mind, the Battle of Hodow, Battle of Klushino, Battle of Kircholm, Battle of Lubieszow, Battle of Trembowla, battle of fuengirola etc.

6.( While it's true that Poles had Horse units in WW2.

So did everyone else except Great Britain.

Actually the Nazis, and Soviets each had many times more Horses than Poland.

So, why do many anti-Polish Nazis, and anti-Polish Soviets ignore these facts?

7.) Bromberg Massacre starting before WW2 is not historically accepted.

But, many Nazis, or German sympathizers try, none the less.

I think the fact that Nazi Germany had claimed a Bromberg Massacre was going on since March of 1939, but invaded Czechoslovakia in March of 1939 instead of Poland says all that needs to be said.

8.) While it's true that Poland is where many Concentration Camps are located.

The Nazi Germans had annexed this land.

Furthermore Nazi Germany first put Poles into Auschwitz, rather than Jews.

Up to 100's of thousands of Poles passed through the Concentration Camps, and 100's of thousands of more Poles were killed in Nazi massacres, including Wola Massacre, the Ponary Massace, Operation Tannenberg etc.

9.) Poland was the first nation to fight the Nazis.

After the Nazis had invaded, Poland had the biggest anti-Nazi resistance in occupied Europe.

Poles had the highest number of Righteous Among the Nations risk their lives to save Holocaust victim Jews, some serious names come to mind like Eugene Lazowski, Henryk Slawik, or Irena Sendler.
(This is in spite of the fact that Poland was the only nation in occupied Europe that a death penalty was created for aiding Holocaust Jews.

Zegota was an entire Polish organization which had dedicate their time, lives, and resources to aiding Holocaust victim Jews.

With that said, Poles like all populations of Europe had some Nazi collaborators.

But, there's no recorded Polish Nazi SS units in Europe.

Furthermore even the Jews had some Nazi collaborators.
Actually the Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum who lived his last days in the Nazi controlled Warsaw Ghetto, had admitted that Jewish Nazi collaborators of the Jewish Ghetto Police, were more brutal than Polish Nazi collaborators of the Polish Blue Police.



99 is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. ONE POINT off the norm? lol!


And I've never heard anyone say anything negative about Poland when it comes to warfare. Sandwiched between Germany and Russia is not a fun place to be.

1 point off the norm of the UK, the average IQ worldwide is more like 90 according to Lynn, and Rindermann.


I've also never heard of the drunken pole stereotype. And I live in an area that got a fair amount of Eastern European immigration.

for the drunken pole stereotype----READ SEMI AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVELS BY AMERICAN
POLISH WRITERS.

A lot of good writers have had a Polish origins, Adam Mickiewicz, Jozef Conrad, Nikolai Gogol, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Dostoeyevsky, Czeslaw Milosz, Charles Bukowski, Juliusz Slowacki, Gunter Grass, Zbigniew Herbert, Boleslaw Prus, Stanislaw Lem, Cyprian Norwid, Stanislaw Reymont, and Zymunt Krasinski.
 
Polish diplomats who saved Jews from the Holocaust
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After nearly 75 years and following more than one year of negotiations, Poland reacquired the so-called Eiss Archive, one of the largest collections documenting rescue operations of endangered Jews by the Polish diplomatic corps. The acquisition was announced jointly by the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Bern, the Ministry of Culture & National Heritage and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.
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The archive documents the rescue operations carried out in Bern during World War by the then Polish Ambassador Aleksander Ładoś and his diplomats, as well as Jewish organisations cooperating with them. During this campaign, several thousand illegally obtained passports from Latin America were issued, saving the lives of hundreds of people.

"Our duty was to regain the Eiss Archive - undeniable proof that Poles, the Polish state, its representatives, systemically and institutionally were involved in saving Jews during World War. The activities of the then Polish diplomats in Switzerland, newly discovered and documented, can serve as an inspiration for historians, as well as for writers, filmmakers, and creators of culture. I would like to thank the Polish ambassador in Switzerland for his determination to recover the documents as well as for learning about and telling this story - which is one of dozens, but probably the least known and widely forgotten. Today we have a chance to remind the world about it,” said Prof. Piotr Gliński, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture & National Heritage.

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"The collection includes eight Paraguayan passports forged by Polish diplomats with the aim of saving Jews, as well as unique and never used pictures of people applying for such passports. It also includes an original list containing several thousand names of Jews from the ghettos, who in this way tried to escape the Holocaust, and a number of documents, including correspondence between Polish diplomats and Jewish organisations. The collection also includes a personal list of children from Warsaw orphanages. These documents constitute a very important collection, showing both the contemporary drama of Polish Jewish families as well as attempts to get as many people as possible out of the hell that was the Holocaust,” said Dr. Piotr Cywiński, director of the Museum.

The Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to Switzerland, Dr. Jakub Kumoch, explained the details behind the acquisition of the collection. "Immediately after the publication on Ładoś and his diplomats, we managed to locate the Eiss Archive in a private family collection. This is the great achievement of our honorary consul in Zurich, Markus Blechner, who for almost a year has been working to obtain this collection from the descendants of Chaim Eiss and convinced them that its place is in Poland, in institutions documenting the Holocaust and pre-war Jewish life,” he said.

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The Eiss collection is made up of documents found many years after the war. They originally belonged to Chaim Eiss (1876-1943), a merchant from Ustrzyki and one of the leaders of the Aguda Yisrael orthodox movement. He was a member of the Bern Group, which under the leadership of the Polish envoy (ambassador) Aleksandra Ładoś, forged Latin American passports to save Jews. Eiss provided Polish diplomats with a list of beneficiaries and smuggled the doctored passports in to the General Government. This hero who saved many victims from the Holocaust died suddenly of a heart attack in November 1943. Some of his correspondence with the then Consul of the Republic of Poland, Konstanty Rokicki has survived, concerning the production of Paraguay's passports. In his correspondence with Aguda Yisrael, Eiss repeated on many occasions the important role played by Ładoś and Rokicki. It was on the basis of his relationship that in January 1945 Aguda issued a letter of gratitude to Polish diplomats involved in this unique campaign.

Eiss’ documents made their way to Israel via one of his descendants. Negotiations aimed at reacquiring them started last summer. The collection will remain in Bern for a few months, where it will be put on display. It will be brought to Poland at the beginning of next year and will be hosted in the collection of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, where the documents will be subjected to conservation work and thoroughly analysed by archivists and historians.

Polish diplomats who saved Jews from the Holocaust
 
Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain
Creator of a breakthrough compression algorithm fights to keep it patent-free.

TIMOTHY B. LEE - 6/10/2018, 8:10 AM

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Enlarge / Meet inventor Jarek Duda.
Jarek Duda
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When Jarek Duda invented an important new compression technique called asymmetric numeral systems (ANS) a few years ago, he wanted to make sure it would be available for anyone to use. So instead of seeking patents on the technique, he dedicated it to the public domain. Since 2014, Facebook, Apple, and Google have all created software based on Duda's breakthrough.

But now Google is seeking a patent that would give it broad rights over the use of ANS for video compression. And Duda, a computer scientist at Jagiellonian University in Poland, isn't happy about it.

Google denies that it's trying to patent Duda's work. A Google spokesperson told Ars that Duda came up with a theoretical concept that isn't directly patentable, while Google's lawyers are seeking to patent a specific application of that theory that reflects additional work by Google's engineers.


But Duda says he suggested the exact technique Google is trying to patent in a 2014 email exchange with Google engineers—a view largely endorsed by a preliminary ruling in February by European patent authorities.

The European case isn't over, though, and Google is also seeking a patent in the United States.

We first started looking into this issue after we got an email about it from Duda back in March. After weeks of back-and-forth discussions, Google finally provided us with an on-the-record statement about the patent—albeit a very bland one. It stated that Google had included information about Duda's prior work in its application and that "we await and will respect the USPTO's determination."

But a few days later, Google sent a follow-up statement with a different tone.

"Google has a long-term and continuing commitment to royalty-free, open source codecs (e.g., VP8, VP9, and AV1) all of which are licensed on permissive royalty-free terms, and this patent would be similarly licensed."

Duda isn't convinced, though. "We can hope for their goodwill; however, there are no guarantees," he said in an email to Ars. "Patents licensed in 'permissive royalty-free terms' usually have a catch."

Duda wants the company to recognize him as the original inventor and legally guarantee that the patent will be available for anyone to use. Or better yet, stop pursuing the patent altogether.

ANS: Better, faster compression

Enlarge
/ Facebook has created a compression library based on ANS.
ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
Computers represent data using strings of ones and zeros. For example, the ASCII encoding scheme uses a seven-bit string to represent alphanumeric characters.

Data compression techniques represent data more compactly by exploiting the fact that symbols do not appear with equal frequency. In English text, for example, the character "e" appears much more often than "z" or "x." So rather than representing every character with seven bits, an efficient scheme might use three or four bits to represent the most common letters while using more than seven bits to represent the least common.

A standard way to do this is known as Huffman coding, which works well when dealing with symbols whose probabilities are inverse powers of two. Information theory says that the optimal encoding makes the length of each symbol (in bits) proportional to the negative logarithm of its probability. For example, suppose you're trying to encode the symbols A (P=1/2), B (P=1/4), C (P=1/8), and D (P=1/8). In that case, an optimal encoding might be A=0, B=10, C=110, D=111.

This is optimal because log2(1/2) is -1, so A should have a 1-bit representation, log2(1/4) is -2, so B should have a 2-bit representation, and log2(1/8)=-3, so C and D should have 3-bit representations.

But Huffman encoding doesn't do as good a job when symbol probabilities are not inverse powers of two. For example, if your symbols are E (P=1/3), F (P=1/3), G (P=1/6), and H (P=1/6), Huffman coding isn't so efficient. Information theory says that E and F should be represented by bit strings 1.584 bits long, while G and H should be represented by strings 2.584 bits long.

That's impossible with Huffman coding—any Huffman code will use too many bits to represent some symbols and too few to represent others. As a result, data compressed with Huffman coding techniques will often wind up being longer than it needs to be.

But it is possible to effectively represent symbols with a non-integer number of bits if you relax the requirement that each symbol be represented by a specific, discrete bit string. For example, a technique called

Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain
 
Note"
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On December 10, 1942, the Polish government-in-exile appealed to signatory states of the United Nations Declaration with a request to prevent crimes being committed against the Jewish population in German-occupied Poland. On the 75th anniversary of the note’s submission, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is presenting an image of the original note, kept in The National Archives in London.
The note, signed by the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Edward Raczyński, is formally dated 9 December 1942. It was delivered, however, on the following day (10 December 1942) and it was also published on that date. The creation of the note was closely related to Jan Karski's arrival in London in November 1942. Karski's accounts and the microfilms he brought with him detailed the tragic situation of the Jewish population in occupied Poland. Edward Raczyński handed over information on this to the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden during a meeting on 1 December 1942. Raczyński also proposed organising a multilateral conference to share information about the crimes being committed. In the absence of a British reaction, the Polish government decided to send the note to the signatory states of the United Nations Declaration.

The note (imprecisely called the Karski Report) contained information about the current situation of Jews in occupied Poland and laid out German crimes. It also listed the ways in which the Polish government had provided information and made protests, and called on Western states to stop the crimes. In the final paragraphs, the Polish government called not only for the condemnation of the murders and the punishment of the guilty parties, but also appealed for measures that would stop the mass extermination methods.

The note met with widespread press commentary, and the reaction of Allied governments was the announcement on 17 December 1942 of a special declaration in which severe punishment of the guilty was made.

To publicise the facts about the genocide of the Jews in occupied Poland (apart from the official submission of the note), the Polish authorities also published a large number of special brochures in English and distributed them through Polish diplomatic and consular missions. The 16-page booklet consisted of an introduction and four documents concerning the extermination of the Jewish population on Polish territory under German occupation.

The most important of the documents in the brochure was, of course, Raczyński's note from 10 December 1942. The brochure also contained the text of the joint declaration of the Allied states of 17 December 1942, an excerpt of the statement of Deputy Prime Minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk on 27 November 1942 and a text by Edward Raczyński from 17 December 1942.

The full content of the brochure in PDF format: The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland

A documentary film has been made devoted to Edward Raczyński which includes segments on statements regarding the persecution of civilians. Excerpt 6.25-6.50 shows the speech of 13 January 1942 in St. James's Palace, excerpt 7.35-8.46 concerns the note from 10 December 1942 and the figure of Jan Karski.

75th Anniversary of "Raczyński's Note"
 
Could This Polish Innovation Save the Bees?
Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, 5 months, 2 weeks ago

Saatchi & Saatchi IS Warsaw teams up with City Bees to create a smart paper, writes Laura Swinton
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Dropping litter, I think we can all agree, is a bad thing. I might go further and suggest that it marks one out as one of the worst kinds of human. But then again, not all litter is created equal – and a new kind of paper has just been revealed that Mother Nature might be quite happy for you to drop.

Saatchi & Saatchi IS Warsaw has teamed up with City Bees, an urban bee conservation organisation, to create Bee Saving Paper. It’s a new biodegradable material that has many applications and can also work like an ‘energy drink’ for bees.

This invention was created in response to the dramatic decline in the global bee population. Although bees are estimated to provide a global economic value of €150bn and are thought to be responsible for keeping 90% of all wild plants in existence, humans have not been particularly careful about protecting these fuzzy, flying friends. In Poland, where the project originated, 222 out of 469 species are already on the verge of the extinction.

One of the major problems that bees face - alongside extensive use of pesticides - is that rapid industrialisation and urban development has depleted their food sources. They are forced to fly long distances to find food, leaving them exhausted and dying because they simply lack the energy to survive.






In order to develop the paper, the agency collaborated with a range of specialists including entomology and paper craftsmen. The paper contains energy-rich glucose (though it is non-sticky to touch) and seeds and is covered in water-based UV paint. The paint can be seen by bees and so it is applied on the paper in a pattern that resembles a meadow full of plants and pollen.

Once the bee buzzes off, well-fed and revived, it leaves behind the seeds, which then grow and flower. That means that next season even more bees can benefit.

“We managed to develop and produce what is probably the first paper nature would not only like you to use, but maybe even to drop. We know our innovation won’t solve the worldwide problem of the declining bee population, but we hope we’ll at least make people realise how important bees are to us,” said Tomasz Bujok and Anna Gadecka, senior creatives on the project.

Bee Saving Paper has already passed a successful field test, when it was used to create the visual identity – or as the creators prefer to call it, beesiness identity – for a beekeeper who lost over 95% of his hives.

Could This Polish Innovation Save the Bees? | LBBOnline
 
Twice The Genius: The Music & Inventions of Józef Hofmann
#technology & innovation
Author: Marek Kępa
Published: Sep 19 2017
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Polish-born Józef Hofmann was not only a highly acclaimed pianist, respected by the likes of Rachmaninov but also a keen inventor that registered over 70 patents, including a proto-GPS and a solution decreasing the resistive drag of piano keys, still used today in Steinway pianos. His seemingly contradictory interests in music and technology ended up fuelling each other.

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Josef Hofmann, fot. The Granger Collection / Forum
Those who knew him claimed Józef Hofmann (1876-1957) didn’t exactly ‘look like a musician.’ According to an anecdote, his hands were rather small for a piano virtuoso but, instead of giving up on playing, he designed his own special instrument which had keys that were narrower than usual. He also doesn’t seem like a typical pianist in a photo where he’s flexing his biceps. His looks were said to have actually been suggestive of a car mechanic. And it just so happened that when Hofmann was twenty-five he… constructed an automobile in which he travelled across Europe. Generally, he had a liking for the field of motorisation which displayed itself through the numerous technical innovations he introduced in it. Among them was a GPS prototype. In an article by Wojciech Brzeziński in the Polish weekly Tygodnik Powszechny, we read:

‘To whom it may concern. I hereby declare that I, Józef Hofmann, subject of the Austro-Hungarian Kaiser, residing in Potsdam, Germany, have invented a helpful improvement of location-showing devices.’ With these words begins the description of a device registered as patent no. 909 798 on 12th January 1909 in the U.S, a device that is a distant ancestor of... GPS navigation. (...) ‘When the map’s scale’ – he writes in the patent application – ‘is suitable for navigating between cities and villages it’s way too small for riding through them. On the other hand, a scale enabling easy navigation through cities is too big for practical use outside of them.’ His solution was a rotating disk with variously-scaled tape maps, the rotation speed of which would automatically adjust itself on shifting from one scale to another. Thanks to this the driver could travel through cities and between them with equal ease.

Shock absorbers constructed by Hofmann were commonly used in cars and planes as late as in the 1940s. The patent enhancing the work of piano keys, which boosts the quality of playing by strongly decreasing the resistive drag accompanying their movement, is still used by Steinway.

A wunderkind
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Józef Hofmann performing at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, photo: NAC
Józef Hofmann was born in Kraków. He started learning to play piano at the age of three – at first, it was his sister who was teaching him, later his aunt. When he turned four, his father, a splendid pianist himself, took over his education. In the 27th April 1885-issue of the periodical Echo Muzyczne i Teatralne, we read about the small Hofmann’s talent:

The eight-year-old son of ballet director Hofmann was displaying his piano skills and compositions in front of Anton Rubinstein. The maestro believes there’s a bright future ahead of the child.

The less than ten-year-old Hofmann performed on 6th January 1886 in Warsaw playing Mozart’s Concerto in D minor under the direction of his father. On 7th January 1886, the daily Kurier Warszawski noted:

With yesterday’s appearance, the little virtuoso proved that he has great and precocious talent, highly developed technique and even some individualism.

The young pianist electrified the audiences of Europe’s concert rooms with his playing. In November 1887, at the age of eleven, he performed at Carnegie Hall winning the hearts and souls of New York’s elite. A New York Times critic wrote afterwards that his playing ‘wasn’t extraordinary for a child, it was extraordinary for a man.’

Touring eastern America at the turn of 1887 and 1888, he gave fifty-two concerts in the span of ten weeks. The streak of success was broken only due to a protest from the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which raised concerns about the boy’s health. A court order prevented the completion of the eighty-concert contract.

However, thanks to the publicity Hofmann gained through his concerts, Alfred Corning Clark, heir to the Singer sewing-machine fortune, granted him a scholarship on the condition that he wouldn’t perform publically before turning eighteen. Fortunately for the young Hofmann, he had other passions aside from playing concerts, namely the exact sciences of maths, physics and chemistry.

Toward the end of 1887, he began corresponding with Thomas Alva Edison looking to use one of Edison’s inventions, a cylindrical device for recording sound. Two years later, after Edison perfected the commercial version of his phonograph, he sent one unit over to Hofmann who, at the time, was in Berlin.

From music to technology
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Windshield wiper, photo: Wikipedia
Despite Clark’s terms, the boy didn’t drift away from music. He studied piano, chiefly under Anton Rubinstein, a Russian pianist living in Dresden. In the years 1892-94, he would travel to him for lessons from Berlin on a weekly basis.

In the next fifty years, wherever fortune placed Józef Hofmann, he changed how listeners thought about music. He was held in equal admiration both in Russia and America. Asked about the best pianist in the world, after taking a moment to think, Rachmaninov replied: ‘Well, there’s Hofmann.’

Music always stimulated him as an inventor. The pendulous movement of the metronome rod gave him the idea of constructing windscreen wipers. The invention was appreciated by the Ford car company which began mass producing it. In his book Polacy, którzy Zmienili Świat (editor’s translation: Poles who Changed the World), Marek Borucki writes:

He loved cars. He designed many improvements used by their manufacturers including shock absorbers substantially increasing the comfort of driving. He devised construction solutions implemented in balloons and planes. He came up with the idea for the well-known spiral-shaped heater for boiling water, an electric clock and even a motorboat. It’d be hard to enumerate all of his inventions and technical solutions. Some claim there was over seventy, others that there was about a hundred of them. Of course Hofmann didn’t keep his inventions to himself, he patented most of them which gave him hefty revenues.

He is responsible for the appearance of spring bumpers and pneumatic shock absorbers. These were tested by the New York police which often had to chase criminals over bumpy roads.

They say necessity is the mother of invention and that certainly is true of his improvements linked to playing music. He is said to have begun by constructing piano pedal extensions – the small boy had trouble reaching the foot-operated elements during performances. Pianists owe him for the possibility of regulating the elevation of the piano stool so that it best matches a performer’s height as well as many solutions in piano design, enhancing the comfort of playing and sound emission.

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Józef Hofmann (in the left) in the company of Mieczysław Munz, in front of the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Kraków, 1938, photo: NAC
Years after his first visit to the Hofmanns, Arthur Rubinstein wrote the following about it in his book Moje młode lata (editor’s translation: The Years of My Youth):

The thought of meeting the famous Józef Hofmann thrilled me immensely. He was from Kraków, only twenty two at the time but already a great celebrity. In Russia he was considered the only worthy successor to his tutor, the lamented Anton Rubinstein, in the USA on the other hand he was seen as the sole musician capable of competing with Paderewski, a figure much revered there. You can easily picture how terrified I was when I was to play before him. We were greeted with traditional Polish hospitality; especially Hofmann senior, the piano teacher, proved amiable. He was also the only one to carefully listen to me play. The young Józef remained completely indifferent, but when we were getting ready to leave after the musical display had ended, to our surprise he tried to stop us and with this childish pride he started showing us his various knick-knacks. Among them were gifts from the great inventor Thomas Edison, but even though all of this impressed me in the manner expected, I was somewhat disappointed with his apathetic approach toward music.

Others point to the mutual influence between music and technology that occurred in Hofmann’s case. To some when he was playing he seemed more of a well-organised mind than a laid-back artist that spontaneously resonates with the audience’s moods. The pianist Roman Jasiński wrote in his memoirs Zmierzch Starego Świata, Wspomnienia 1900–1945 (editor’s translation: The Decline of the Old World, Memories from the Years 1900 – 1945):

When Hofmann was playing he stuck me as a smart engineer sitting at the console of a miraculous machine, regulating its workings with a great calm and precision.

There’s no doubt that people from the music scene held the famous pianist’s technological skills in high regard. They described it with respect, not questioning their colleague’s accomplishments. It seems, however, that they praised this area of Hofmann’s activity more often than his artistic exploits. Arthur Rubinstein noted:

He was famous for his mechanical skills; regarding the piano, he was mainly interested in possible adaptations of the construction that would affect the height of the keys, string tension or the sound holes.

Thinking process = creative process
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Józef Hofmann, photo: NAC
Hofmann’s tours of America were always split in half by two months of vacation during which he’d take a break from playing the piano. Instead, he’d play tennis, swim and tinker. Experiments in his workshop resulted in patents for, for example, a regeneration process of battery electrodes, an oil oven and a motorboat. In his book Józef Hofmann. Geniusz Zapomniany. Dzieciństwo i Młodość (editor’s translation: Józef Hofmann. The Forgotten Genius. Childhood and Youth), Jan Żdżarski wrote:

In life there comes a moment when one feels the need to relax, rest and think. So Józef went to the shore to ponder. He watched the ducks swimming in a line… a boat dancing on the wind-amplified waves. How the waves rock it and tell it where to go.
– I’d like to have a boat that doesn’t listen to the wind and waves. One that goes where I want it to. I don’t want to change its course using paddles. I’ll steer it.

According to Hofmann’s biographer, that’s how the concept of the motorboat could’ve been born.

Józef Hofmann was one of those artists to whom the process of creating was inseparably linked to the process of thinking. He warned beginning artists from indulging in being blithe, from following only one’s intuition and avoiding creative effort. Hoffman himself said:

Always be determined when you work, aiming to give all you’ve got. Find a teacher you can rely on and take his advice concerning your career. Don’t give into the illusion that success depends on fate. The most important determinants are your effort, work and wise guidance over you.

He enhanced the system of recording a piano on punched tape, used for operating pianolas. His mechanism could register and play back very subtle differences in loudness characterising a musician’s given performance. Unfortunately for Hofmann, he came up with the invention when pianolas were already going out of use. Borucki writes:

He was the first pianist to record his own music. The first recording of the artist was made by his friend Thomas Edison, who made it using a phonograph of his invention. Sadly, this record has been lost. Edison even urged Hofmann to abandon music for engineering, acknowledging the worth of the pianist’s inventions. Hofmann, however, was capable of being successful in both of these fields.

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Thomas Edison with his second phonograph, photographed by Mathew Brady in Washington, April 1878, photo: Wikipedia
The boy playing the piano was recorded on special cylinders and they were one of the earliest, if not the first ever, musical recordings. In view of this, it seems a bit of a paradox that when he was at the peak of his fame he wouldn’t allow his music to be recorded, arguing that the level of technical advancement at the time wasn’t good enough to properly register and play back the sound of his instrument. In 1939, a California journalist heard him say that recording is a ‘mechanical process devoid of the human element and the feelings that the performer receives from the audience.’

Edison’s personal secretary, A.O. Tate wrote the following in his memoirs: ‘the invention of the phonograph drew many big names to the laboratory. Among them was Józef Hofmann, a brilliantly talented boy […] who played on some of the earliest records of piano music.’ These were, in fact, the first ever recordings of an acclaimed artist. Józef always announced them with a phrase that was also recorded and phonetically sounded more or less as ‘Im-prohvah-zah-scion bye Yoh-zhef Off-mann’. Tate added that he didn’t know whether the recordings survived because the ‘wax cylinders used to record sound back then quickly broke if they weren’t handled with extraordinary care.’ In the Tygodnik Powszechny article we read:

After Hofmann retired from performing in public he led a rather unhappy life, spending his last years in solitude and silence. He was constantly working on enhancing the methods of recording piano music, he had a home device for recording sound on discs and a modified, six-foot long Steinway piano. He kept experimenting with various devices and novelties, attaching speakers and microphones to different parts of the piano.

Józef Hofmann ended his career at the age of seventy. When ten years later a radio journalist called him with birthday wishes the pianist told him that after he stopped giving concerts, he found time for his hobbies: maths, physics and chemistry. He was still working on enhancing the technology of recording the piano. He passed away a year later.

Twice The Genius: The Music & Inventions of Józef Hofmann
 
Iconic Polish opera on two European stages
24.08.2018 15:32
  • Iconic Polish opera on two European stages
Poland's iconic opera, Halka by Stanisław Moniuszko, can be heard in two extraordinary productions in August.
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First print of music from the Halka aria entitled "If at the Morning Sun" with illustration of soprano Janina Korolewicz (circa 1895). Photo: Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

The tragic story of the ill-fated love of a Highland girl is being put on in Italian in Warsaw this Friday as part of the Chopin and His Europe festival and by Opera Festival in Helsinki.

Elzbieta Krajewska spoke to Laura Åkerlund who directed the Finish production of Halka.

Iconic Polish opera on two European stages
 
He duped Nazis, saved thousands
Because Eugene Lazowski was a doctor, he believed he should not kill. He would not even shoulder a rifle.

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But he also could not stand by while other good and innocent people were killed.

And so when the Nazis overran Poland in World War II, Lazowski yearned to find a way to fight back, to protect human life, and he seized upon a paradoxical instrument of salvation--the German army's profound fear of disease. While German industrialist Oskar Schindler, whose heroic story was told in the movie "Schindler's List," employed bribes and influence to protect as many as 1,000 Jews who worked in his factory, Lazowski slyly used medical science to save the lives of thousands of Jews and other Poles in 12 Polish villages. He and a fellow physician, Stanislaw Matulewicz, faked a typhus epidemic that forced the German army to quarantine the villages.

Thanks to that quarantine, many of the villages' 8,000 men, women and children likely were spared the fate of being deported to prisons, slave labor camps or death camps, where Poland lost a fifth of its population.

"He's why I became a doctor," one of those villagers, Jan Hryniewiezki, says today about Lazowski. "He was a patriotic hero because he wasn't afraid to do what he did during very bad times."

For decades after the war, Lazowski's and Matulewicz's audacious actions went unheralded and were almost forgotten. Lazowski, his wife and their daughter immigrated to Chicago in 1958, where he became a professor of medicine at the University of Illinois Medical Center. Matulewicz resettled in Zaire, where he became a professor of radiology. He now is retired in Poland.

But eight years ago, the two doctors finally got around to writing a book, in Polish, about their exploits. Private War became a best seller and made them heroes in Poland. And now a young documentary filmmaker from north suburban Bannockburn, Ryan Banks, is completing a film about the doctors' exploits that he hopes will also make them celebrated figures here.

Not that the doctors much care. They say they just did what doctors should do. "The basic duty of a physician is to preserve life," Lazowski explained, "and this was a way of saving lives."



FIGHTING WITHOUT A GUN

In German-occupied Poland in 1942, Lazowski was a 29-year-old doctor, somewhat soft-spoken, working for the Polish Red Cross in the tiny village of Rozwadow. The Gestapo was terrorizing the countryside--committing random murders, seizing young Polish men and women to work as slave laborers, and dispatching Jews to death camps.

Lazowski was deeply distressed. As a doctor, he felt he could not pick up a weapon and kill another man. But as a Polish patriot and man of conscience, he could not stand by and do nothing. So when a fellow doctor, Matulewicz, told him he had discovered a way to make healthy people test positive for typhus, Lazowski was delighted--and immediately knew what his role in the war would be.

"I was not able to fight with a gun or a sword," he said, "but I found a way to scare the Germans."

Typhus is an infectious disease spread by body lice that is often fatal, and at that time there was no cure and vaccinations were scarce. The German army dreaded the disease because in unsanitary wartime conditions, it could race through a regiment. So doctors who suspected that a patient had typhus were required to submit blood samples to German-controlled laboratories for testing.

Jews who tested positive were shot and their houses burned. Non-Jews were quarantined or sent to special hospitals.

Matulewicz desperately wanted to bypass the German labs. He dared not send the labs blood samples from Jewish patients--it would mean their deaths. He had to figure out a way to perform the typhus test on his own.

"It was very important for us to make a final diagnosis for people who were hiding from the Germans or who were Jews because it could be very dangerous to send their blood for examination," Lazowski explained.

The accepted test for typhus at that time consisted of mixing a certain strain of killed bacteria with a blood sample from the patient. Under proper laboratory conditions, if the patient had typhus, the blood sample would turn cloudy.

Matulewicz did manage to devise a way to do the test on his own, and in the process he stumbled upon a curious discovery--if a healthy person were injected with the bacteria, that person would suffer no harm but would test positive for typhus.

When Matulewicz told Lazowski of his discovery, Lazowski immediately proposed that the two doctors secretly create a fake typhus epidemic to frighten the Germans into quarantining the area. A typhus scare could hold off the German army as effectively as a line of tanks.

From that day on, Lazowski and Matulewicz injected the killed bacteria into every non-Jewish patient who suffered from a fever or exhibited other typhuslike symptoms. They sent blood samples from the patients to the German-controlled lab. And, sure enough, every patient tested positive for typhus.

So as not to draw suspicion to themselves, the two doctors referred many of their patients--after injecting them with the bacteria--to other doctors who weren't in on the ruse. These doctors would "discover" the typhus on their own and report it separately. Better yet, when a patient really did have typhus, Lazowski and Matulewicz publicized the case as much as possible--but only if the patient was not Jewish.

Within a few months, the Germans became alarmed.

One by one, "Achtung, Fleckfieber!" (Warning, Typhus!) signs went up in surrounding villages, until a dozen towns with a total of about 8,000 people were under quarantine.

The deportation of workers to Germany from these areas was stopped. German troops kept their distance. Villagers began to feel more relaxed. And only Lazowski and Matulewicz knew there was no epidemic.

They told no one, not even their wives.

"I was scared, of course," Lazowski said. "I didn't know if I would be arrested and tortured by the Gestapo. So I carried a cyanide pill in case I was arrested."

Hryniewiezki, who was just a boy of 15 at the time, says he remembers the shots the doctors gave, the epidemic and the quarantines. He also remembers, he says, that after a while, people figured out what was going on.

"When people were getting better, they realized that it was phony," he said in a phone interview from Poland. "But, of course, no one said a word because they knew the Germans would kill them and kill Dr. Lazowski."

Hryniewiezki, who is now a surgeon in the Polish town of Poznan, added, "He saved lots of people who would have gone to jail or to labor camps in Germany or death camps."

But if no one publicly raised doubts about the epidemic, they quietly wondered why nobody was dying.

"If someone asked me why he recovered so quickly from such a serious disease, I just told him he was a lucky man," Lazowski said.

WITH THE UNDERGROUND

Lazowski's fake epidemic came too late for the Jews of Rozwadow, the town where he practiced. The Jews there were rounded up and deported to labor and death camps before the quarantine. But Lazowski's sleight of hand undoubtedly saved many other Jews--although it is impossible to say how many--who were hiding in the countryside or living in the other quarantined towns.

At the start of the occupation, Jews accounted for at least 10 percent of the area's population, and that percentage may have grown as Jews fled the big cities for the countryside.

Even before he created the fake typhus epidemic, Lazowski was active in the underground Polish resistance, supplying information, medical care, medicine and bandages to bands of saboteurs and guerrillas hiding in the woods. The rear fence of his home backed up to the Jewish ghetto in Rozwadow, and he sneaked in at night to treat patients there.

The German authorities demanded a careful accounting of all the drugs and supplies Lazowski used, but here again he managed to fool them. Since his office was close to the town's railroad station, he often was called upon to treat patients who were just traveling through. In his official reports, Lazowski would overstate the amount of drugs and supplies he used in treating these traveling patients, knowing the Germans would have a tough time finding him out.

But by late 1943, some among the German top brass began to suspect something was wrong. Polish collaborators had tipped them to the fact that no one seemed to be dying from this epidemic.

"The chief of the Gestapo was watching me because he was sure that something was going on," Lazowski recalled. "But I was also a kind of hero to the Germans because I was a young doctor who was not afraid to be infected, so they needed me. But still they thought something was fishy."

The local Gestapo chief notified the health authorities, who in turn dispatched an investigative commission and two carloads of soldiers to the quarantined area.

Lazowski was ready for them.

He lined up the oldest, sickest and most unhealthy-looking people he could find, all of whom had been injected with the fake typhus. He had them wait in filthy huts.

Then he had the town put on a big party for the visitors. The vodka flowed, music played and many kielbasa sausages were consumed.

"We thanked them for coming and put on a great reception," Lazowski said. "They were having such a good time they sent the younger doctors to make the examinations. I told them to be my guest and examine the patients, but to be careful because the Polish are dirty and full of lice, which transfer typhus."

To Lazowski's relief, the young doctors rushed through the exams and only took blood samples from a few subjects without checking for actual symptoms of the disease.

When the blood samples later tested positive for typhus, Lazowski heard nothing more from German health authorities for the rest of the war.

STILL MORE SECRETS

In the waning days of the war, with the Russian army looming just across the river, the Germans panicked and began to flee. A young military policeman whom Lazowski had secretly treated for venereal disease roared up to his office on a motorcycle.

"Doctor, run, you are on the Gestapo hit list," the policeman said.

When Lazowski protested that he had been loyal to the Germans, the policeman smiled and named a specific date and place where Lazowski had been seen treating members of the Underground.

"So they knew about me," Lazowski said, flashing a smile at the memory, "but they didn't kill me because I was needed to fight the typhus epidemic."

Lazowski continued to live in Poland, under communist rule, until his move to Chicago in 1958. But fearing retaliation from former Polish collaborators, he kept quiet about the "epidemic" until he came here. Only then did he confide everything to his wife, Murka, whom he had married at the beginning of the war.

Murka, who died in 1996, was not completely shocked. She knew he had worked with the Polish Underground. He had, in fact, frequently traded messages with someone code-named "Pliszka."

After they were married, Murka told him: She was Pliszka.

HOMECOMING

Lazowski, now 87, returned to his hometown in Poland for the first time just last fall, invited to take part in a wartime reunion.

lazowski2.jpg
He received a hero's welcome.





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Jamestown home

The Role and Accomplishments
of Polish Pioneers in the Jamestown Colony

By Joshua D. Holshouser, Lucyna Brylinska-Padney,
Katarzyna Kielbasa
Interns at the PAC Washington Office
July 2007


jt1608.jpg
The number of early immigrants from 17th-century Poland to America was minimal. In fact, Poland served as a destination for immigrants from both Western and Eastern Europe. Other nations in Europe were wasting no time in exploring and colonizing the new lands across the Atlantic Ocean. Spain and Portugal had taken an early lead over Britain and France, but Britain was determined to make up for lost time. Its own society being split along religious lines, Britain had no shortage of individuals looking for a new start and freedom from religious oppression.

On December 1607, the first British settlers arrived in Jamestown in the hope of finding natural resources such as gold, lumber and herbs, carrying with them their ultimate goal - profit. Sent by the Virginia Company of London, they arrived with large expectations. However, their inability to settle a colony was larger. Two problems immediately beset the colonists. First, some of the colonists were English noblemen with no experience either in the military or in manual labor. Thus, the colony found itself without skilled craftsmen or soldiers; worse, many of the colonists outright refused to engage in work that they felt was beneath them. Second, the physical location chosen for the site of Jamestown proved to be a poor one. The land was swampy (making it a veritable breeding ground of disease), the water supply was poor and relations with the local indigenous Indian tribes were rocky at best. Within less than a year, the colony was in danger of failure. No profits were heading back to England; disease ran rampant due to the lack of fresh water, food supplies were low, and little to no work had been done to establish an industrial base. In fact, much of the time had been spent panning for gold rather unsuccessfully in Virginia’s rivers. The Virginia Company of London had nothing to show for its investment and a small prospect for future returns.

To salvage their colony, the Virginia Company hired a group of Poles, known for their reputation and valuable expertise in the lumber and other manufacturing industries. Captain John Smith had first-hand experience dealing with Polish manufacturers through his work with the Virginia Company of London, in addition to his experience traveling through Poland on his return from the Middle East. Before his travels to America, John Smith had been a Turkish prisoner. Poland provided Captain Smith with his first Christian refuge following his escape.

The first Poles who arrived at Jamestown came aboard the British ship Mary and Margaret on October 1, 1608 under the command of Captain Christopher Newport. Bringing skilled labor and military experience lacking among the original colonists, the Poles were engaged in the manufacturing of glass, pitch, tar, soap, ash and other products. The English Parliament had restricted the amount of English timber available for cutting, and their experience in this field alone would have made the contributions of the Poles invaluable. In addition, while the British settlers coming to America were mainly social outcasts, some fleeing England for religious freedom, the Poles "[…] were members of the Polish gentry, former country squires, who, besides being of intellectual class, were well acquainted with the methods of production needed at the time of Jamestown […]". In other words, the Poles had no hang-ups about doing the important manual labor needed to preserve the survival of the colony.

Among the first Poles who arrived in America were Michael Lowicki, an organizer of industry and business and the leader of the original five; Jan Bogdan, an expert in pitch, tar, and ship building; Zbigniew Stefanski, a specialist in glass production; Jan Mata, a prominent soap producer, and Stanislaw Sadowski a lumber and clapboard production organizer. The colonists viewed the Poles as hard-working and respectful. The Poles first impressions of Jamestown were not very positive. Stefanski observed, "Seldom has one seen such lack of resourcefulness as we found in Virginia. Not even a spoonful of drinking water […] the people here marveled when we dug a well and presented it to them (…) […]". That water well provided a regular source of drinking water, stopping the spread of dysentery and other related illnesses and death due to the drinking of swamp water. The Poles also set up sawmills and began cutting up beams and lumber without rest, earning them respect throughout the colony. Stefanski and Bogdan would later go on to save Captain John Smith’s life when Smith was attacked by several Indians.
Among major accomplishments of the first Poles was the building of a glass furnace, the first factory in America and the beginning of an industry. The goods produced in these factories became the first "made in America" goods to be exported to England. When the Mary and Margaret was ready to sail back to England, the Polish settlers sent back a full line of glassware samples they were prepared to turn out in commercial quantities as well as a cargo of pitch distilled from Virginia’s pine trees.

The colonists respected the Poles for their quality of work and other accomplishments. For instance, the Pole Lawrence (Wawrzyniec) Bohun was the first doctor in Jamestown colony. Moreover, the work done by the original group proved valuable enough to allow them to repay the Virginia Company for their passage to America, and this in turn allowed them to later become free citizens of the colony. Within a few years, there were fifty Poles living in Jamestown. Also important was the example these Poles set for the colonists. As the former President of the College of William and Mary Admiral Alvin Chandler stated in 1953, "It took the example of the Polish glassmakers to demonstrate to the colonists that the treasures of Virginia were in its soil, not in nuggets to be had for picking."

On June 30, 1619, when the Jamestown Legislative Assembly instituted a representative form of government, rules stated that only colonists of English descent would be given the right to vote. This denied Poles the right to governmental representation in a colony they helped to sustain and grow. As a result they organized what became the first labor strike in American history. Their slogan was "No vote. No work".

Facing angry and influential politicians in England, within a few weeks the Jamestown government bowed to the demands of Poles, granting them the same rights given to all workers within the colony. It is important to note that this event was not a strike against unfair employers or work place practices, but a battle for civil rights and inclusion in the political process. As Admiral Chandler stated: "…practically all of the profits realized by the London Company came from the resale of the products of the Polish industries. The Jamestown government quickly realized that if it sent empty ships back to England, the consequences could be very unpleasant". These Polish craftsmen used the economic power they had acquired through their labor to engineer an equal footing as citizens for themselves.

While the history of Jamestown itself proves to be a tragic one in the end, the tradition, practices and actions of these original settlers lives on. Despite early setbacks (in 1610 John Smith left the colony as a result of a grave injury and only 65 colonists survived the next two winters) the colony gave rise to similar establishments and taught valuable lessons. Because of tragic events the Virginia Company lost its charter in 1624, the Pamunkee Indian tribe devastated the colony in 1644 and in 1676 Jamestown was burned to the ground in Bacon’s Rebellion, destroying one of America’s first great settlements. By 1698, the surviving colonists had moved closer to the land now known as Williamsburg. The significance of Jamestown lies in its strategic timing and success. As Louis B. Wright, Professor of American History stated, "If Jamestown had failed, Spain and France ultimately might have divided all of North America between them and the United States might never have come into being."

The Polish contribution to Jamestown and the fabric of early America makes it a cornerstone of the American experience. The saving of Jamestown after its first disastrous year was due in large part to the efforts of those original Poles. Fresh water from the well, the beginnings of industry, even the saving of the life of the Jamestown hero Captain John Smith all resulted from the actions of these men. The example they showed by their industrious work ethic and their efforts to gain and retain their own individual freedom provided a model for generations of later colonists and Americans.

Role of Polish Colonists at Jamestown
 

The Bloody Valentines – Anniversary of the Formation of Poland’s Armia Krajowa
14th February 2016 · by insidepoland · in History, Latest news, Looking Back
Valentine’s Day, 1942, saw the official formation of Poland’s Home Army (Armia Krajowa) – the underground organisation of partisans on Polish soil who engaged in combat and espionage against both Hitler’s Wehrmacht and Stalin’s Red Army, then continued resistance to the Soviet takeover of their country after the Second World War.



The Polish army saw its last official action of the Second World War on October 6, when General Franciszek Kleeberg’s Independent Operational Group (Samodzielna Grupa Operacyjna – SGO) was defeated at the Battle of Kock. Yet plans for continued resistance in the form of an underground army had already been put in place nine days earlier, with the establishment of the Service for Poland’s Victory (Służba Zwycięstwu Polski). A little over a month later the SZP became the Armed Resistance (Związek Walki Zbrojnej), which, on February 14 1942, was formalised as the Home Army.

At the time of its formation, the Home Army had around 100,000 members, a number that had doubled within a year. The underground nature of the organisation makes it impossible to say how many were among its ranks by the time of the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944, but historian Stanisław Salmonowicz believes that, counting all who lent their support to the Home Army, it could have been as high as half a million.

From the beginning, the Home Army was engaged in combat and espionage against two enemies – Nazi Germany from the west, and Soviet Russia from the east. The campaign against the Nazis was rather more straightforward than that against the Soviets, and Germany was a common enemy of Poland, Britain and the other allies. In this respect, the Home Army took part in major operations such as the protection and evacuation of Poles in the Zamość area in 1942 and several attacks in the western borderlands in 1943 and 1944. Most notably, the Home Army is remembered for Operation Tempest, a series of uprisings in Białystok, Kraków, Lublin, Radom, Łódź – and the ill-fated last stand in Warsaw. There in the capital, with the Red Army approaching the River Wisła, Poland’s Home Army attacked the German occupiers in anticipation of support that never came.

Among the espionage activities of the Home Army directed against the Nazis were acts of sabotage such as those carried out by Jerzy Iwanow-Stajnowicz. It was also through such espionage that the world came to know of the mass murders being carried out at the Nazi German concentration camps in Poland. Notable in this respect were Witold Pilecki, who allowed himself to be imprisoned at Auschwitz in order to report back on conditions there, and Jan Karski, the Home Army courier who took vital reports from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Polish government in exile in London. Indeed, there were numerous Jews among the ranks of the Home Army, and the organisation did much to help Jews in Poland, who the Nazi occupiers were determined to exterminate. This was at a time when the penalty for any Pole helping a Jew in any way was death.

From the perspective of the struggle with the Soviets, the fact that Moscow formally joined the allies against Hitler after the German invasion of Russia made resistance politically complicated for the Home Army. Officially, Poland and Russia were from that point on the same side; on the ground, however, they were at war. In the summer of 1943, the Soviet high command had no qualms about ordering the elimination of the Home Army in the eastern territories that Stalin saw as Soviet land. A telegram from the Home Army’s Białystok commander Władysław Liniarski, dated March 1945, outlines the arrests, murders, deportations and more that the Russian security services carried out in their campaign against Poles. This was two months after the Home Army had formally been disbanded, and a month after the Yalta Conference at which the UK, the USA and the USSR had decided that Poland would fall under Soviet control after the war, yet despite officially ceasing to exist, the organisation’s soldiers continued to fight.

After Nazi Germany had been defeated the Home Army concentrated its efforts on the Soviet occupiers, fighting a far more clandestine war. Noting the opposition that threatened to hinder Russian dominance in Poland, Moscow launched a propaganda campaign branding the Home Army as ‘Accursed Soldiers’ (Żołnierze wyklęci) and painting its members as bandits. The level of resistance from the Home Army in the years immediately after the Second World War is indicated by an ‘amnesty’ in 1947 which drew some 50,000 out of hiding.

The Home Army’s legacy continued long after the war. In 1963, Józef Franczak was killed during a gunfight at Majdan Kozic Górnych, and in 1967 Adam Boryczka – trained by the British for the Home Army’s ‘Dark and Silent’ (Cichociemni) elite paratroop unit

The Bloody Valentines - Anniversary of the Formation of Poland's Armia Krajowa | Inside-poland.com
 
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