In Search of Poland

In Search of Poland
Author: Arthur R. Rachwald
Publisher: Hoover Press
Total Pages: 172
Release: 1990-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780817989637

Solidarity, Arthur Rachwald concludes, was the weight that tipped the scales toward democracy as Poland balanced precariously between democracy and Marxist-Leninst totalitarianism. An international event, that appearance in Poland of Solidarity--the first independent and self-governing labor union in the Soviet bloc--met strong reactions in the East and West. Moscow perceived Solidarity as the most destablizing challenge to its imperial order in Eastern Europe since Titoism in 1948. Professor Rachwald's timely book details the extraordinary events that led to the June 1989 semifree elections, which placed the government of Poland in the hands of a Solidarity-led coalition, and culminated in the self-dissolution of the Polish Communist party. Using documents and reports in Polish, Russian, and English, Arthur Rachwald compares U.S. Soviet, and Polish authorities' reactions to events in Poland during the 1980s as well as analyzes U.S.-Polish relations and their effect on the Polish government's domestic and foreign policies. The author gives careful attention to the complex relations among the political players, particularly the communist authorities and the Roman Catholic church. Exploring one of the most critical political developments of our time, he discusses the pivotal position, politically and geographically, that Poland occupies in Eastern Europe.

A Country In The Moon

A Country In The Moon
Author: Michael Moran
Publisher: Granta Books
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2011-06-02
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1847084931

In this uproarious memoir and meticulously researched cultural journey, writer Michael Moran keeps company with a gallery of fantastic characters. In chronicling the resurrection of the nation from war and the Holocaust, he paints a portrait of the unknown Poland, one of monumental castles, primeval forests and, of course, the Poles themselves. This captivating journey into the heart of a country is a timely and brilliant celebration of a valiant and richly cultured people.

Philosophy and Logic In Search of the Polish Tradition

Philosophy and Logic In Search of the Polish Tradition
Author: Jaakko Hintikka
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2013-06-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401702497

This volume contains papers on truth, logic, semantics, and history of logic and philosophy. These papers are dedicated to Jan Wolenski to honor his 60th birthday. Jan Wolenski is professor of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland. He is likely to be the most well-known Polish philosopher of this time, best known for his work on the history of the philosophy and logic of the Lvov-Warsaw School.

Spring Will Be Ours

Spring Will Be Ours
Author: Andrzej Paczkowski
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 608
Release: 2010-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780271047539

The Spring Will Be Ours focuses on the turbulent half century from the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which started the chain of events that would lead to the communist takeover of Poland, to 1989, when futile attempts to reform the communist system gave way to its total transformation. Andrzej Paczkowski shows how the communists captured and consolidated power, describes their use of terror and propaganda, and illuminates the changes that took place within the governing elite. He also documents the political opposition to the regime - both inside Poland and abroad - that resulted in upheavals in 1956, 1968, 1970, 1976, and 1980. His narrative makes evident the pressures that the elite felt from above, from Moscow, and from below, from the population and from within the party. The history of Poland and the Poles is of special interest because on numerous occasions in the twentieth century this relatively small country influenced developments on a global scale.

In Search Of A Lost People; The Old And The New Poland

In Search Of A Lost People; The Old And The New Poland
Author: Joseph Tenenbaum
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Total Pages: 518
Release: 2016-01-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786257955

The heart-breaking story of Joseph Tenenbaum who visited Poland in 1945 after the end of the Second World War in search of his Jewish relatives. “I can only report fragments of what I saw and heard or read during my two and a half months abroad. But these fragments seem to me to be not only of moment to Jews. Despite all the investigating commissions and international committees on behalf of Jewry, the world knows little enough of the depths of human degradation or the great surges of spirit and individual flashes of heroic greatness that have been revealed. There is a clash of two worlds, a clash that has not ceased with the death of Hitler in the gasoline flames in the cellars of the German chancellery. The sparks from the body-burning stakes at the Janowska camp in Lwow, of the ovens at Majdanek, Treblinka and Belzec, and the flames of the chimneys at Birkenau, Sobibor, Oranienburg and Mauthausen, have seared the human soul and scarred the human conscience. We cannot avoid facing the truth simply by ignoring it or driving it underground. The sanity of man, his very soul, requires a thorough catharsis which can come only through frank discussion, through revealing the naked evil in all its deformity and horror. We must think through all the implications, past and present, and realize their full dimensions. Only thus can sanity and moral strength be preserved for future generations. In short, while this book aims at giving a frank presentation of facts and conditions, it is hoped that it may offer a modest educational contribution towards a better world.”—From the Author’s Introduction

Hunt for the Jews

Hunt for the Jews
Author: Jan Grabowski
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2013-10-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 025301087X

A revealing account of Polish cooperation with Nazis in WWII—a “grim, compelling [and] significant scholarly study” (Kirkus Reviews). Between 1942 and 1943, thousands of Jews escaped the fate of German death camps in Poland. As they sought refuge in the Polish countryside, the Nazi death machine organized what they called Judenjagd, meaning hunt for the Jews. As a result of the Judenjagd, few of those who escaped the death camps would survive to see liberation. As Jan Grabowski’s penetrating microhistory reveals, the majority of the Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal by their Polish neighbors. Hunt for the Jews tells the story of the Judenjagd in Dabrowa, Tarnowska, a rural county in southeastern Poland. Drawing on materials from Polish, Jewish, and German sources created during and after the war, Grabowski documents the involvement of the local Polish population in the process of detecting and killing the Jews who sought their aid. Through detailed reconstruction of events, “Grabowski offers incredible insight into how Poles in rural Poland reacted to and, not infrequently, were complicit with, the German practice of genocide. Grabowski also, implicitly, challenges us to confront our own myths and to rethink how we narrate British (and American) history of responding to the Holocaust” (European History Quarterly).

Poland 1939

Poland 1939
Author: Roger Moorhouse
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0465095410

A "chilling" and "expertly" written history of the 1939 September Campaign and the onset of World War II (Times of London). For Americans, World War II began in December of 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but for Poland, the war began on September 1, 1939, when Hitler's soldiers invaded, followed later that month by Stalin's Red Army. The conflict that followed saw the debut of many of the features that would come to define the later war-blitzkrieg, the targeting of civilians, ethnic cleansing, and indiscriminate aerial bombing-yet it is routinely overlooked by historians. In Poland 1939, Roger Moorhouse reexamines the least understood campaign of World War II, using original archival sources to provide a harrowing and very human account of the events that set the bloody tone for the conflict to come.

Unvanquished

Unvanquished
Author: Peter Hetherington
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Europe, Eastern
ISBN: 9780983656319

The epic story of Joseph Pilsudski, the father of Polish independence. Although he is largely either unknown or misunderstood in the West, Pilsudski was a consequential historical figure whose defeat of the Red Army in 1920 preserved Poland's sovereignty and quite possibly spared Europe from Bolshevik revolution. This account of Pilsudski's life places this and other achievements in the proper context by providing sufficient background in Polish history and illuminating his interconnectedness with more well known historical events.

Surviving Katyn

Surviving Katyn
Author: Jane Rogoyska
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2021-05-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786078937

WINNER OF THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE ‘A gripping reconstruction… utterly compelling reading.’ Adam Zamoyski ‘This is a grim story, thoroughly researched and brilliantly told.’ Geoffrey Alderman, Times Higher Education The Katyn Massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war is a crime to which there are no witnesses. Committed in utmost secrecy in April–May 1940 by the NKVD on the direct orders of Joseph Stalin, for nearly fifty years the Soviet regime succeeded in maintaining the fiction that Katyn was a Nazi atrocity, their story unchallenged by Western governments fearful of upsetting a powerful wartime ally and Cold War adversary. Surviving Katyn explores the decades-long search for answers, focusing on the experience of those individuals with the most at stake – the few survivors of the massacre and the Polish wartime forensic investigators – whose quest for the truth in the face of an inscrutable, unknowable, and utterly ruthless enemy came at great personal cost.

Document USSR-54

Document USSR-54
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 52
Release: 1998
Genre: Katyn Massacre, Katynʹ, Russia, 1940
ISBN: 9781901240191

'The Report by a Special Soviet Commission, 24 January 1944, concerning the shooting of Polish officer prisoners of war in the forest of Katyn. The executions had been carried out in autumn in 1941 by the German "Staff of the Construction Battalion 537." In spring 1943 the Germans, by blackmailing witnesses into giving false evidence and by other means, had tried to make it appear that the Soviet NKWD was responsible for the shooting of the 11,000 victims.'--T.p. verso.