Why?
Czesława Kwoka was 14 years old. On the arrival, they tattooed number 26947 on her left forearm. Then they took her picture. Not before the guard beat her up with a club. The Germans had sent the girl and her mother to Auschwitz to be exterminated. Both came from the area of Poland designed by […]
Our Dreams after Fifty Years, A Reunion
I just came back from Warsaw. My old Alma Mater honored us with the repeat of our graduation ceremony, from fifty-years back. Fifty years! I could remember us at our first one. Imagine a bunch of twenty-something boys and girls, all anxious to put the recently acquired knowledge to use, all facing dreamed careers of […]
“Loss of Innocence,” new in my series of Polish War Stories
Let’s imagine. Imagine yourself as a sixteen-year-old girl coming from a small village on the outskirts of Warsaw to the big metropolis. You overflow with hope for a bright future. You are ambitious and determined to make the best out of your young, budding life. The change in living conditions is enormous, but you can […]
Witold Pilecki’s Story of the Ultimate Courage
The movie “The Enigma Secret”, which came out in 1979, presented the Polish version of the events, and never achieved the publicity, as its British counterpart “The Imitation Game”, which appeared in 2014. Not unlike the Polish soldiers’ contribution to the final results of WW2. Having sustained the most casualties (after Russia) and having the […]
How the Poles Got Screwed Again by Our Allies
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Sun Tzu Imagine the invisible war. The countries fight for their lives without weapons, soldiers, casualties, and without the property damage. At least not in the conventional meaning. The borders are imaginary.The fighters sit behind giant supercomputers and never see their adversaries. They work […]
Finding Family Roots in Poland
“A tree without roots is just a piece of wood.”― Marco Pierre White Wouldn’t you love to meet your great-grandparents? Or at least, as an invisible man hover above their farm and watch them for a day or so? I would. Their farm in still there. But the only thing left after my ancestors are the […]
Learning from the past and about finding out my roots
History gives us a sense of proportion: it’s an antidote to a lot of unfortunately human trends like self-importance and self-pity. David McCullough Historian and Pulitzer prize winner. But first, one has to know his history. Here is a typical story I hear so often. We meet and after the initial conversation, and the person sensing […]
Roundup, The Picture; Polish War Series part 1
In a deep corner of the old drawer, he found a browned shoebox with two rubber bands holding the top down. On its side, the box had a yellowed sticker with ‘BLACK AND WHITE’ written with a broad, dark pencil. The rubber bands seemed aged, partially cracked, but still holding this old box together. He […]
Nasza Droga do Sukcesu albo Siatkówka w Akademii Medycznej w Warszawie
W roku 1961 zacząłem studia medyczne w Warszawie. Siatkówką zainteresowałem się jeszcze w szkole średniej i dla zachowania równowagi psychofizycznej chciałem również grać na mojej uczelni. Szczęśliwie znalazłem tam zespół podobnych zapaleńców. Skromne początki Treningi odbywały się na odległym stadionie i w dodatku późnym wieczorem. Ponieważ zajęcia na uczelni nie rozpoczynały się przed ósmą, […]
