With the Nazi Party at the height of its power, the occupying army empties Poland’s towns and cities of their Jewish populations. As neighbor turns on neighbor and survival often demands unthinkable choices, Poland has become a moral quagmire—a place of shifting truths and blinding ambiguities.Blending folklore and fact, Helen Maryles Shankman shows us the people of Wlodawa, a remote Polish town: we meet a cold-blooded SS officer dedicated to rescuing the creator of his son’s favorite picture book, even as he helps exterminate the artist’s friends and family; a Messiah who appears in a little boy’s bedroom to announce that he is quitting; a young Jewish girl who is hidden by the town’s most outspoken anti-Semite—and his talking dog. And walking among these tales are two unforgettable figures: the enigmatic and silver-tongued Willy Reinhart, Commandant of the forced labor camp who has grand schemes to protect “his” Jews, and Soroka, the Jewish saddlemaker and his family, struggling to survive.

    But her Polish-born mother and half sister had endured dehumanizing conditions during World War II, as slave laborers in Siberia. War and exile created a profound bond between mother and older daughter, one that Donna would struggle to find with either of them.             In 1940, Janina Ślarzynska and her five-year-old daughter Mira were taken by Soviet secret police (NKVD) from their small family farm in eastern Poland and sent to Siberia with hundreds of thousands of others. So began their odyssey of hunger, disease, cunning survival, desperate escape across a continent, and new love amidst terrible circumstances.             But in the 1950s, baby boomer Donna yearns for a “normal” American family while Janina and Mira are haunted by the past. In this unforgettable memoir, Donna recounts her family history and her own survivor’s story, finally understanding the damaged mother who had saved her sister. Finalist, Best Traditional Non-Fiction Book, Chicago Writers Association

    Watch the book trailer at www.polww2.com/EchoesTrailer Raw, eloquent, nuanced, intimate Guzlowski illuminates the many faces of war, the toll it takes on innocent civilians, and the ways in which the trauma echoes down through generations. His narrative structure mirrors the fractured dislocation experienced by war refugees. Through a haunting collage of jagged fragments poems, prose and prose poems, frozen moments of time, sometimes dreamlike and surreal, other times realistic and graphic Guzlowski weaves a powerful story with impacts at levels both obvious and subtle. The result is a deeper, more visceral understanding than could have been achieved through descriptive narrative alone. This is the story of Guzlowski s family: his mother and father, survivors of the war, taken as slave laborers by the Germans; his sister and himself, born soon after the war in Displaced Persons camps in Germany; the family s first days in America, and later their neighbors in America, some dysfunctional and lost, some mean, some caring and kind; and the relationships between and among them all. As Guzlowski unfolds the story backwards through time, he seduces us into taking the journey with him. Along the way, the transformative power of the creative process becomes apparent. Guzlowski s writing helps him uncouple from the trauma of the past, and at the same time provides a pathway for acceptance and reconciliation with his parents. Ultimately, then, this is a story of healing. Because America is a land of immigrants with myriad and varied pasts, Guzlowski s story may reflect pieces of your own family s history, though details will of course differ. Something similar may also be the hidden story of one of your friends, or a colleague at work, or the sales clerk or waiter who serves you one day or even, like Guzlowski, your professor of English literature.

    As mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters, female Polish forced laborers faced a unique set of challenges and often unspeakable conditions because of their gender. Compelled to learn more about her own mother's experience as a forced laborer, Sophie Hodorowicz Knab embarked on a personal quest to uncover details about this overlooked aspect of World War II history. She conducted extensive research in archives in the U.S., London, and Warsaw for over 14 years to piece together facts and individual stories.Knab explains how it all happened, from the beginning of Nazi occupation in Poland to liberation: the roundups; the horrors of transit camps; the living and working conditions of Polish women in agriculture and industry; and the anguish of sexual exploitation and forced abortions--all under the constant threat of concentration camps. Knab draws from documents, government and family records, rare photos, and most importantly, numerous victim accounts and diaries, letters and trial testimonies, finally giving these women a voice and bringing to light the atrocities that they endured.

    Ciszek, S.J., finally returned to America. Had he come back a bitter man, or a man of diminished faith, it would have been hard to fault him. But he didn’t. For the remainder of his years, until his death in 1984, Fr. Ciszek’s grace, faith, and wisdom touched—often in profound and lasting ways—everyone who came into contact with him. With God in America is a collection of previously unpublished writings on Ciszek’s post-imprisonment life and thoughts. The contents—which include articles he wrote, speeches he delivered at retreats, letters he sent to people he was counseling, and interviews with individuals who knew him personally—present a man unbroken by all that he had endured and eager to share God’s love with others. From Ciszek’s first days back home in the States to his final words before his death, With God in America demonstrates that saintliness isn’t primarily about acting heroically in dramatic or devastating circumstances, but about honoring the ordinary, everyday aspects of life as treasured gifts from God.

    This in-depth guide will walk you step-by-step through the exciting--and challenging--journey of finding your Polish, Czech, or Slovak roots. You'll learn how to identify immigrant ancestors, find your family's town of origin, locate key genealogical resources, decipher foreign-language records, and untangle the region's complicated history. The book also includes timelines, sample records, resource lists, and sample record request letters to aid your research.In this book, you'll find- The best online resources for Polish, Czech, and Slovak genealogy, plus a clear research path you can follow to find success - Tips and resources for retracing your ancestors' journey to America - Detailed guidance for finding and using records in the old country - Helpful background on Polish, Czech, and Slovak history, geography, administrative divisions, and naming patterns - How the Three Partitions of Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire affect genealogical research and records - Information on administrative divisions to help you identify where your ancestors' records are kept - Sample letters for requesting records from overseas archives - Case studies that apply concepts and strategies to real-life research problemsWhether your ancestors hail from Warsaw or a tiny village in the Carpathians, The Family Tree Polish, Czech and Slovak Genealogy Guide will give you the tools you need to track down your ancestors in Eastern Europe.

    The Keller Papers is a fast-moving espionage story based in 1980s Eastern Europe, including factual events and personalities of the times, which have become so relevant in today s strained East/West political environment."

    Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and Josef Stalin's USSR collaborated in the conquest, and then split Poland between them. The Germans carried out most of the fighting and gained the choicest parts of the nation. As a penetratingly bitter New York Times editorial stated on September 18th, 1939, “Germany having killed the prey, Soviet Russia will seize that part of the carcass that Germany cannot use. It will play the noble role of hyena to the German lion. This gross betrayal of the professions that Soviet Russia has been making for years is being defended in the manner with which the world has now grown sickeningly familiar. Because Poland has ‘virtually ceased to exist,’ Russia is free to break every treaty with it (Sword, 1991, 292). The Germans instituted oppressive rule in their portion of Poland, executing some 7,000 people on political grounds and imprisoning thousands of others. 1.5 million Poles became forced laborers in Germany, and though seldom noted, the Soviets applied equally brutal methods in their sector, executing 22,000 Polish officers at the Katyn Forest Massacre. NKVD death squads murdered 40,000 civilians and deported 1.4 million people to Siberia and other remote areas, from which a sizable percentage never returned alive. As the Soviets began to push the Germans back west, the Red Army plunged headlong into Poland in late June 1944 on the heels of German Army Group Center's retreating forces. The British urged the AK to cooperate with the Soviets, but the Russians wanted Poland and treated the Resistance as enemy partisans. The NKVD arrested AK members by the thousands, executing their leaders out of hand. By late July, the Polish government in exile thought it was time to order the AK to lead an uprising in Warsaw. The sight of German units retreating, and Soviet tanks seen on July 31st very close to the city, prompted the order to openly retake Poland's capital for the nation. Unfortunately, it was a decision also predicated on a naively optimistic faith in Anglo-American support. As a result, the Poles fought bravely but futilely in August and September against the Nazis, and the Nazis, as they so often did, mercilessly destroyed the city causing the trouble. Heinrich Himmler, the head of the notorious SS, told his men, “The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation." In fact, the Germans had intended to destroy Warsaw from the beginning of the war, and they were terribly successful. One Allied pilot recalled, “There was no difficulty in finding Warsaw. It was visible from 100 kilometers away. The city was in flames but with so many huge fires burning, it was almost impossible to pick up the target marker flares." It’s estimated that up to 200,000 Poles were killed in the process, and to top it all off, the Soviets arrested and executed countless more after the Nazis were finally gone.

    Covering twenty national cultures andlanguages, the ensuing work goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narrative and offers a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entanglement of discourses. Devising a regional perspective, the authors avoid projecting the Western European analytical and conceptual schemes onthe whole continent, and develop instead new concepts, patterns of periodization and interpretative models. At the same time, they also reject the self-enclosing Eastern or Central European regionalist narratives and instead emphasize the multifarious dialogue of the region with the rest of theworld. Along these lines, the two volumes are intended to make these cultures available for the global 'market of ideas' and also help rethinking some of the basic assumptions about the history of modern political thought, and modernity as such.The first volume deals with the period ranging from the Late Enlightenment to the First World War. It is structured along four broader chronological and thematic units: Enlightenment reformism, Romanticism and the national revivals, late nineteenth-century institutionalization of the national andstate-building projects, and the new ideologies of the fin-de-siecle facing the rise of mass politics. Along these lines, the authors trace the continuities and ruptures of political discourses. They focus especially on the ways East Central European political thinkers sought to bridge the gapbetween the idealized Western type of modernity and their own societies challenged by overlapping national projects, social and cultural fragmentation, and the lack of institutional continuity.

    As such, the book offers a corrective view in the form of social history, one that commands attention and demands respect for the vitality and activism of the generation of Polish Jews so brutally annihilated by the barbarism of the Nazis.In Warsaw, a city with over 300,000 Jews (one third of the population), Bernstein was the Jewish Labor Bund’s “enforcer,” organizer, and head of their militia—the one who carried out daily, on-the-street organization of unions; the fighting off of Communists, Polish anti-Semitic hooligans, and antagonistic police; marshaling and protecting demonstrations; and even settling family disputes, some of them arising from the new secular, socialist culture being fostered by the Bund.Goldstein’s is a portrait of tough Jews willing to do battle—worldly, modern individuals dedicated to their folk culture and the survival of their people. It delivers an unparalleled street-level view of vibrant Jewish life in Poland between the wars: of Jewish masses entering modern life, of Jewish workers fighting for their rights, of optimism, of greater assertiveness and self-confidence, of armed combat, and even of scenes depicting the seamy, semi-criminal elements. It provides a representation of life in Poland before the great catastrophe of World War II, a life of flowering literary activity, secular political journalism, successful political struggle, immersion in modern politics, fights for worker rights and benefits, a strong social-democratic labor movement, creation of a secular school system in Yiddish, and a youth movement that later provided the heroic fighters for the courageous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

    He is crushed in battle. All of his personal knights are slain, and he vanishes without a trace. Some years later, on Madeira Island, 2,500 miles to the west, a mysterious Knight of Saint Catherine of Mount Sinai marries into the Portuguese elite . . . and has a son. Astonishing as it may seem, these two impossibly remote events have been connected -- and the clouded genesis of Christopher Columbus is thereby once and forever resolved. The key to unlocking the mystery was waiting in a place where nobody had ever looked before. 25 years of research has pieced together a stunning array of artifacts and data, from one end of Europe to another, from Asia, Africa and the Americas: a chapel ruin, a ceiling mural in a private palace, DNA test results, an impressive diversity of documents, keenly analyzed . . . and a sword, unearthed by a 19th century Bulgarian peasant, that found its way to a museum in Saint Petersburg. The study and comparison of carefully censored State archives also helped explain this life -- hitherto enshrouded in the deceitful machinations of power politics, false identities, and false discoveries in the Age of Exploration. Myth has at last been separated from fact, exposing what actually transpired. Being extremely fond of writing memoirs, journals and letters, the man known as Columbus left a great deal of this overwhelming proof himself. Many other clues have been painstakingly gathered and analyzed, on heraldry, on a gravestone, via signatures and pseudonyms. What emerges is the picture of a consummate double-agent, with a bold and grandiose agenda. Enter this 500-year-old labyrinth and discover the unimaginable: a medieval conspiracy so audacious, so massive, and so well executed that it fooled the world for half a millennium. The Christopher Columbus you knew will be history.

    For over a century, descendants from this community thought of themselves as Polish, but this began to change in the 1980s due to the work of a descendant priest who emphasized the community’s origins in Poland’s Kashubia region. What resulted was the reinvention of ethnicity concurrent with a similar movement in northern Poland. Creating Kashubia chronicles more than one hundred and fifty years of history, identity, and memory and challenges the historiography of migration and settlement in the region. For decades, authors from outside Wilno, as well as community insiders, have written histories without using the other’s stores of knowledge. Joshua Blank combines primary archival material and oral history with national narratives and a rich secondary literature to reimagine the period. He examines the socio-political and religious forces in Prussia, delves into the world of emigrant recruitment, and analyzes the trans-Atlantic voyage. In doing so, Blank challenges old narratives and traces the refashioning of the community’s ethnic identity from Polish to Kashubian. An illuminating study, Creating Kashubia shows how changing identities and the politics of ethnic memory are locally situated yet transnationally influenced.

    Indeed, the role of the Polish people hasn't only been as the defenders of the West, but also as a pivot, a conduit by means of which ideas, knowledge, and technologies have moved through Europe and the world. This book is about the creativity and larger-than-life achievements of the daughters and sons of Poland.

    John the Baptist. "They knew that the strength of the Polish nation was rooted in the Cross, Christ's Passion, the spirit of the Gospels, and the invincible Church," argued Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński in a letter celebrating the building's subsequent reconstruction. "To weaken and destroy the nation, they knew they must first deprive it of its Christian spirit." Wyszynski insisted that Catholicism was an integral component of Polish history, culture, and national identity. The faithfulness of the Polish people fortified them during times of trial and inspired much that was noble and good in their endeavors.Filling a sizable gap in the literature, White Eagle, Black Madonna is a systematic study of the Catholic Church in Poland and among the Polish diaspora. Polish Catholicism has not been particularly well understood outside of Poland, and certainly not in the Anglophone world, until now. Demonstrating an unparalleled mastery of the topic, Robert E. Alvis offers an illuminating vantage point on the dynamic tension between centralization and diversity that long has characterized the Catholic Church's history. Written in clear, concise, accessible language, the book sheds light on the relevance of the Polish Catholic tradition for the global Catholic Church, a phenomenon that has been greatly enhanced by Pope John Paul II, whose theology, ecclesiology, and piety were shaped profoundly by his experiences in Poland, and those experiences in turn shaped the course of his long and influential pontificate.Offering a new resource for understanding the historical development of Polish Catholicism, White Eagle, Black Madonna emphasizes the people, places, events, and ritual actions that have animated the tradition and that still resonate among Polish Catholics today. From the baptism of Duke Mieszko in 966 to the controversialburial of President Lech Kaczyński in 2010, the Church has accompanied the Polish people during their long and often tumultuous history. While often controversial, Catholicism's influence over Poland's political, social, and cultural life has been indisputably profound.

    An absolutely rich and appealing book."—Robert Hass"These cosmopolitan, multilingual poets speak to us across the decades, overcoming a great silence, redirecting the myths, reimagining the role of the poet, and the nature of poetry itself. Scattering the Dark is a useful, subversive, even necessary anthology."—Edward HirschScattering the Dark offers a lively selection of over thirty of Poland's women poets writing before and after the fall of communism.Karen Kovacik is a translator and poet.