Invaded by both Germany and the Soviet Union, it remained under occupation by foreign armies from the first day of the war to the last. The conflict was brutal, as Polish armies battled the enemy on four different fronts. It was on Polish soil that the architects of the Final Solution assembled their most elaborate network of extermination camps, culminating in the deliberate destruction of millions of lives, including three million Polish Jews. In The Eagle Unbowed, Halik Kochanski tells, for the first time, the story of Poland's war in its entirety, a story that captures both the diversity and the depth of the lives of those who endured its horrors.Most histories of the European war focus on the Allies' determination to liberate the continent from the fascist onslaught. Yet the "good war" looks quite different when viewed from Lodz or Krakow than from London or Washington, D.C. Poland emerged from the war trapped behind the Iron Curtain, and it would be nearly a half-century until Poland gained the freedom that its partners had secured with the defeat of Hitler. Rescuing the stories of those who died and those who vanished, those who fought and those who escaped, Kochanski deftly reconstructs the world of wartime Poland in all its complexity-from collaboration to resistance, from expulsion to exile, from Warsaw to Treblinka. The Eagle Unbowed provides in a single volume the first truly comprehensive account of one of the most harrowing periods in modern history.

    “I cannot take the indignities and brutalities. Let’s step forward and make them kill us now.” But Estelle’s mother fiercely responded to her two daughters: No! Life is sacred. It is noble to fight to stay alive. Their mother’s indomitable will was a major factor in the trio’s survival in the face of brutal odds. But Estelle recognized other heroes in the ghetto as well, righteous individuals who stood out like beacons and kept their spirits alive. Their father was one, as were hungry teachers in dim, cold rooms who risked their lives to secretly teach imprisoned children. Estelle’s memoir, published sixty-four years after their liberation from the concentration camp, is a narrative of fear and hope and resiliency. While it is a harrowing tale of destruction and loss, it is also a story of the goodness that still exists in a dark world, of survival and renewal.

     They are innocent schoolgirls ranging in age from 14 to 22. Under normal circumstances they should be learning, laughing, and playing. Unfortunately, the year is 1942 and the place is Nazi-occupied Poland. Nothing is normal. On the night of August 11, dressed only in cotton nightgowns, they await their fate at the hands of their Nazi captors. They are no match for the Nazi beast- or are they? Meanwhile, a young Jewish family is caught in a perilous game of cat and mouse with the Nazis in Berlin. How long can they possibly remain among the living? It's getting harder to run, more dangerous to hide. The Nazis are hot on their trail, and time is running out for both the hunters and the hunted. Rhonda is a successful television personality and a well-respected Jewish educator. With her aging mother still suffering scars left by the Holocaust some 70 years later, she decides it's time to go to Germany, where she pitches her way inside the largest Nazi archive the world has never seen in an attempt to discover the truth about what happened to her mother during WWII. Will the secrets she unveils help heal her mother's wounded soul? Or will the answers to her questions change everything she ever thought she knew about her family, her mother, and herself? Inspired by true events, 94 Maidens is an unforgettable story of heroism, resistance, martyrdom, and survival. "Total Inspiration! Never before has an account of the atrocities of Nazi Germany struck such a chord. 94 Maidens will send chills up your spine and bring tears to your eyes, but Rhonda Fink-Whitman's brilliant depiction of valiancy strengthens the inner soul." Lorraine Ranalli, author of Gravy Wars/South Philly Foods, Feuds & Attytudes and host of the Cucina Chatter Radio Network "Chillingly authentic. It's as if Rhonda dipped her paintbrush into a can of history and used her potent words to paint us a picture that is spot on. I would know." David Tuck, Auschwitz survivor, speaker, educator Meet Dave and hear other eyewitness accounts @ www.94maidens.com. "Heartfelt and moving...a great reminder to all of us about our obligation to share and preserve our own family history, the courage of ancestors, and their impact on our world." Tim Chambers, screenwriter, director, and producer of The Mighty Macs "It wasn't my choice to write this story...it was my responsibility." Rhonda Fink-Whitman RHONDA FINK-WHITMAN is a veteran TV and radio personality as well as an award-winning screenwriter, longtime Jewish educator and the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. 94 Maidens is her first novel. She lives in a suburb of Philadelphia with her husband, two children, and two cats. In their free time, for which they thank our troops, Rhonda and her family volunteer for the USO. Visit Rhonda online at www.94Maidens.com, at www.Facebook.com/94Maidens, and on Twitter @94Maidens. Serious filmmakers interested in the screenplay of 94 Maidens can contact the writer at Rhonda@94Maidens.com.

    His father like all able bodied men is off at war and has neither trained his son in close combat nor left him a sword. Boleslaw is attacked by a wolf and limps home for bandaging, then barely survives a farm raid that kills his grandfather. Four Polish knights kill the brigands then deliver Bole's fallen father's sword, a dying comrade's last wish. Boleslaw struggles with two options: stay on the farm he cannot defend well or follow his father's path to a life at war. Why are the knights reluctant to train him? The Tatra Eagle is an historical novel climaxing at the 1683 Battle of Vienna, seat of the Holy Roman Empire.

    Tackling adult themes with sensitivity, this is a vivid, dramatic and intensely romantic story of obsessive love and loyalty, of tragedy and triumph, set against the backdrop of a turbulent time and place. When Polish noblewoman Maryanna Diduska first meets Ukrainian Piotro Bandura, they are both children, but their situations could not be more different:Stefan took a pouch from his jacket and, with a laugh, scattered coins, as though scattering grain, watching them spread out and dive, hunting among grasses, squabbling volubly, fighting for what they could find, like so many starlings. But one of them didn’t move. He was the tallest and the oldest, a boy of perhaps eleven, his hair black and matted, his face sallow under the grime, his eyes an unexpectedly bright cornflower blue. He stood still, hands hanging by his sides, fists clenched, and he stared up at Maryanna, unsmiling, unmoving. She shifted uneasily. For perhaps the first time in her life, she saw a gaze of pure resentment directed straight at herself. She turned her head into her father’s jacket.‘Daddy, tell the boy not to look at me,’ she whispered.It is also the story of the beautiful pancake yellow house of Lisko, Maryanna’s beloved childhood home, and the way in which the lives of the characters are disrupted by the political turmoil of the times.

    The monograph discusses the valuable contribution of the Polish Military to its two Western allies, France and the United Kingdom leading up to the war, and the respite they received due to Poland's spirited defense that degraded German offensive capability by at least half a year. Recreated in France, the Polish Military conceptualized a liberation policy of encouraging both France and the United Kingdom to undertake a Balkan Strategy to Poland's freedom. Polish relations, with Hungary in particular, and Romania, while British relations with Greece and Turkey, made this a promising policy option. In early 1941, Britain did send troops to aid Greece and the Poles were also about to send their Middle East-based force to Greece. This Balkan- strategy- was strongly shared and espoused by Churchill and on the British planning table till late Summer 1944 when the Americans prevailed in landing forces in the south of France, rather than pushing north in Italy and possibly putting forces across the Adriatic into friendly Croatia and Slovenia. This American policy was undoubtedly due to the pressures of finalizing the European war as soon as possible to get on with the war against Japan, and possibly also influenced by the American foreign policy of accommodating Stalin, who did not want Western Allies in his bailiwick. One of the minor successes was an air supply link to the Polish Underground Forces but its capacity did not meet the needs or expectations. Attempts to reconcile with the Soviets failed to materialize any benefits to the Polish cause, but Polish forces extracted from the Soviets by agreements between Churchill and Stalin, were prized by the British and strengthened British capability in the Middle East. Following the Tehran Conference Polish strategic planning became irrelevant as at the same time the actual strength of the Polish Armed Forces and their professionalism increased. When in early 1945 Churchill asked his staffs for a possible military operation to push the Soviets back out of Poland - Operation Unthinkable, the Polish military in the West and potential clandestine forces in Poland became a major asset. This plan was not supported by the Americans or the important segment of the British coalition Government - the Labor Party, and further events in 1945 lead to the decline in influence once enjoyed by the Polish military in the West.Michael Peszke was born in 1932 in Deblin Garrison, Polish Air Force Academy, where his father was on the faculty. He left Poland on September 17 1939 following the German and Soviet Invasions. In July 1941, after an Atlantic crossing at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic, he joined up with his father who was Polish liaison officer in RAF Training Command, and then in the Air Force planning Section of the Polish Commander in Chief in London. These experiences and many talks with his father led to a lifelong interest in and research into Polish military history and numerous publications. On arriving in the UK he enrolled in Saint Joseph's College, Dumfries, followed by two years at John Fisher School in Purley, Surrey, and in 1950 was accepted to Trinity College, Dublin University and its School of Medicine, qualifying in 1956. Postgraduate studies followed in the United States. The author retired from academic life in 1999 and is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Connecticut, USA; Emeritus Member of the American College of Psychiatrists; Distinguished Life Member of the American Psychiatric Association; Member of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America; Member, Royal United Service Institute, London.

    After the First World War, German national activists made regional distinctions among these Germans and German-speakers in Poland, with preference initially for those who had once lived in the German Empire. Rather than becoming more cohesive over time, Poland's ethnic Germans remained divided and did not unite within a single representative organization. Polish repressive policies and unequal subsidies from the German state exacerbated these differences, while National Socialism created new hierarchies and unleashed bitter intra-ethnic conflict among German minority leaders. Winson Chu challenges prevailing interpretations that German nationalism in the twentieth century viewed Germans as a single homogeneous group of people. His revealing study shows that nationalist agitation could divide as well as unite an embattled ethnicity.

    Readers will get an authentic account of their tribulations through the first-person account of a young Polish orphan's hair-raising journey to India and his experiences during the stay. Author Anuradha Bhattacharjee includes a historical perspective culled out from archival documents in India, the UK and Poland. This is a unique mix of a diary, oral history and historical viewpoint placed adjacent to a compilation of archival personal photographs. The book beautifully brings out a little-known aspect of European exiles in India during the Second World War.

    Their friendship played a role in shaping Karol Wojtyla's early views toward the Jewish people, and his later efforts, as pope, to overcome the legacy of anti-Semitism. Though their story has been previously recounted, here for the first time Jerzy Kluger offers his own account of their relationship over many years. The story begins with their friendship in grade school in Poland, Kluger's extraordinary survival of the war, followed by his reunion with Archbishop Wojtyla in Rome during Vatican II. After his friend's election as Pope John Paul II, their relationship unfolds against extraordinary advances in Jewish-Christian relations. Kluger tells a fascinating tale, highlighting the surprising confluences of history, politics, and religion sealed by friendship and mutual respect.

    The author studied items in various ethnographic collections, notably the State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw. Her basic sources were the folk costumes worn until the first half of the twentieth century and still used in some parts of Poland. Embroideries appeared on women’s bonnets, kerchiefs, chemises, bodices, aprons and skirts, and on men’s overcoats, jackets, waistcoats, shirts and trousers.

    These depictions often made direct reference to the American Wild West, portraying the eastern steppes as a boundless plain that needed to be wrested from the hands of unruly natives and spatially ordered into German-administrated units. While conventional definitions locate colonial space overseas, Kristin Kopp argues that it was possible to understand both distant continents and adjacent Eastern Europe as parts of the same global periphery dependent upon Western European civilizing efforts. However, proximity to the source of aid translated to greater benefits for Eastern Europe than for more distant regions.

    Written in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, "Speak the Culture: Poland" provides a fast track to understanding the key events, figures and customs of this richly creative country in the heart of Europe. The book begins with an overview of the country s cultural foundations the history, language and identity before moving on to Poland s artistic achievements, from the Renaissance poetry of Mikolaj Rej to the films of Roman Polanski. The key figures of art, architecture, literature, philosophy, music, theatre and cinema are revealed succinctly and colorfully. The final section of "Speak the Culture: Poland" covers the country s living culture its religion, social mores, education, economy and more. Only by grasping the culture of Poland will readers develop a fully rounded knowledge of this historic but little understood nation.

    Unlike most Polish commanders he rocked no boats and after his service was complete in 1947 he retreated into relative obscurity. When he died at the age of 102 he had left a single published book of his war memoirs. This book is an attempt to try to put the historical record right, at least in the English language, and place front and centre into the wartime historiography the story of an extraordinary man. Maczek's story is the story of 20th Century Poland and begins naturally enough with his birth in 1892. Born in the Austrian sector, he was conscripted into the Imperial Austrian Army, with which he served with great credit on the Italian Front, high in the Alps. It was this experience which was to serve Maczek well in his future career in the Polish Army after 1918. Maczek should be remembered for his pioneering use of mixed armour and infantry units as well as the early use of commando-style units during the Polish border wars of 1918-1920. However his work was ignored despite its obvious success. He should also be recognised as being the saviour of the Normandy Campaign, which by August 1944 was seriously bogged down. It was feared that the German forces in Normandy might be able to flee over the River Seine and head eastwards towards Germany. A magnificent, stubborn and costly stand by the Polish 1st Armoured Division during August 1944 prevented this happening, and the Normandy Campaign was able to succeed. This is yet to be credited to the Poles in the imagination of the West. After the war, Maczek, now exiled and stateless and with his homeland seized by the Soviet Union, was stripped of his Polish citizenship by the Communists, and was left to bring up his young family on his wages as a barman. This is the story of a man who changed history, fully researched from archival and printed materials, and with a heavy reliance on original Polish language sources. The text is complemented by over 100 previously unpublished photographs. This book will be produced in a limited-edition hardback printing of 500 copies, all copies individually numbered, and signed by the author.