Portal:Poland

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Welcome to the Poland Portal — Witaj w Portalu o Polsce

Cityscape of Kraków, Poland's former capital

Poland is a country in Central Europe, bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic to the southwest, Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, Lithuania to the northeast, and the Baltic Sea and Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast to the north. It is an ancient nation whose history as a state began near the middle of the 10th century. Its golden age occurred in the 16th century when it united with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to form the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the following century, the strengthening of the gentry and internal disorders weakened the nation. In a series of agreements in the late 18th century, Russia, Prussia and Austria partitioned Poland amongst themselves. It regained independence as the Second Polish Republic in the aftermath of World War I only to lose it again when it was occupied by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in World War II. The nation lost over six million citizens in the war, following which it emerged as the communist Polish People's Republic under strong Soviet influence within the Eastern Bloc. A westward border shift followed by forced population transfers after the war turned a once multiethnic country into a mostly homogeneous nation state. Labor turmoil in 1980 led to the formation of the independent trade union called Solidarity (Solidarność) that over time became a political force which by 1990 had swept parliamentary elections and the presidency. A shock therapy program during the early 1990s enabled the country to transform its economy into one of the most robust in Central Europe. With its transformation to a democratic, market-oriented country completed, Poland joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, but has experienced a constitutional crisis and democratic backsliding since 2015.

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Map of the truncated territory of Poland (pink) after the Second Partition, published in London in 1794

The Second Partition of Poland in 1793 was the second of three partial annexations that ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by the end of the 18th century. It was a result of the Polish–Russian War of 1792, in which the Targowica Confederation overturned the progressive Constitution of 1791. The Russian Empire took 250,000 km² (97,000 sq mi) of the Commonwealth's eastern territories, now belonging to Belarus and Ukraine, while the Kingdom of Prussia gained Danzig (Gdańsk) and 58,000 km² (22,000 sq mi) of western Poland, which it renamed South Prussia. Poland was left as a rump state of 215,000 km² (83,000 sq mi). Under Russian pressure, the partition was ratified by Poland at the Grodno Sejm in a short-lived attempt to prevent a complete annexation of Poland, which eventually did happen in the Third Partition in 1795. (Full article...)

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POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Credit: Pudelek

The polychrome wooden vault and bimah of the Gwoździec Synagogue, painstakingly reconstructred in 2014, is the centrepiece of the permanent exhibition at the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. The original synagogue, built in ca. 1640 in what is now the Ukrainian town of Hvizdets, was burnt down in 1941 by Nazi German forces.

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... that two-year-old Ruth Schwarz was rescued from the Sambor Ghetto by Alojzy Plewa, one of many Poles recognized as Righteous Among the Nations (both pictured)?
... that the Majdanek concentration camp trial was the longest Nazi war crimes trial in history, spanning over 30 years?
... that the unsolved shooting death of Henryk Siwiak, a Polish immigrant, is officially the only homicide that occurred in New York on the day of the September 11 attacks?
... that in a Polish study, the silver stretch spider ate an average of 3.7 mosquitoes per day in early June?

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Henryk Sienkiewicz

Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916) was a Polish journalist, novelist and philanthropist, best remembered for his historical novels. Born into an impoverished Polish noble family in Russian-ruled Congress Poland, he began publishing journalistic and literary pieces in the late 1860s. In the late 1870s he explored the United States, sending back travel essays that won him popularity with Polish readers. He began serializing novels in the 1880s and soon became one of the most popular Polish writers of the turn of the century. Numerous translations gained him international renown, culminating in his receipt of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "outstanding merits as an epic writer." In Poland he is best known for his Trilogy of historical novels — With Fire and Sword, The Deluge and Sir Michael — set in the 17th-century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, while he is mostly remembered abroad for Quo Vadis, a novel set in Nero's Rome. Several of his works have been filmed, some more than once, with the 1951 Hollywood adaptation of Quo Vadis receiving most international recognition. (Full article...)

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Wrocław town hall

Wrocław, situated on the Oder River in Lower Silesia, is the fourth largest city in Poland. Dating back to the 11th century, the city has changed its allegiance and name several times in history, and has been known as Vratislav in Czech and Breslau in German. An important economic and cultural hub of eastern Germany until World War II, it can boast eleven Nobel prize winners who were born or lived in Breslau. The picturesque historic center was destroyed during the Siege of Breslau at the end of the war, but then meticulously rebuilt and is now a popular tourist attraction, along with the Centennial Hall and the Racławice Panorama. Modern Wrocław is a growing high-tech and financial center of Poland. (Full article...)

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