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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From Polish history – show another

Swiderian tanged points

The Stone Age in what is now Poland lasted about 500,000 years and involved three different human species: Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. Stone Age cultures ranged from early human groups with primitive tools to advanced agricultural societies, which used sophisticated stone tools, built fortified settlements and developed copper metallurgy. As elsewhere in Europe, the Stone Age human cultures went through the stages known as the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic, each bringing new refinements of the stone tool making techniques. The Paleolithic human activities were intermittent because of the recurring periods of glaciation. A general climate warming and the resulting increase in ecologic diversity was characteristic of the Mesolithic (9,000-8,000 BCE). The Neolithic brought the first settled agricultural communities whose founders migrated from the Danube River area starting ca. 5,500 BCE. Later the native post-Mesolithic populations also adopted and further developed the agricultural way of life (4,400–2,000 BCE). (Full article...)

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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Credit: USHMM

Jews captured by SS and SD troops during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are forced to leave their shelter and march to the Umschlagplatz for deportation. The SD trooper pictured second from the right is Josef Blösche, who was identified by Polish authorities using this photograph. Blösche was tried for war crimes in Erfurt, East Germany, in 1969, sentenced to death and executed in July of that year.

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... that the Tęcza (pictured), a rainbow arch installation in Warsaw, has been vandalized several times due to anti-LGBT sentiments?
... that an early 18th-century civil war in Poland gave rise to a proverb about a state of division, disorder and anarchy?
... that Berek Lajcher chose a hot summer day to launch a prisoner revolt at the Treblinka death camp while German and Ukrainian guards went swimming in the nearby Bug River?
... that the Biosphere Reserves of Poland include the last and largest remaining mixed deciduous primeval forest on the North European Plain?

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Przemysł II as imagined by Jan Matejko

Premislaus II (Przemysł II; 1257–1296) was the first king of Poland after a hiatus of more than two centuries. Born posthumously as the only son of Duke Premislaus I of Greater Poland, he was brought up by his uncle, Duke Boleslaus the Pious, until he came of age and began to rule the Duchy of Poznań. Through inheritance, by 1294 he had expanded his domain over the duchies of Kalisz, Lesser Poland and Pomerelia, but he was forced to retreat from Lesser Poland, leaving it to King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia. Thanks to the mediation of Archbishop Jakub Świnka of Gniezno, Premislaus formed an anti-Bohemian alliance with the dukes of Kuyavia, Vladislaus the Elbow-high and Casimir II of Łęczyca. With much of Poland's territory under his rule, he decided to take the Polish throne; he was crowned by Świnka in Gniezno, in 1295. His reign was cut short nine months later, as he was murdered during a failed kidnapping attempt orchestrated by the margraves of Brandenburg. (Full article...)

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Bydgoszcz granaries

Bydgoszcz is a city in northern Poland, straddling the confluence of the Vistula River and its left-bank tributary, the Brda. It is the eighth-largest city in Poland and the co-capital, with Toruń, of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship. Bydgoszcz is an architecturally rich city, with gothic, neo-gothic, neo-baroque, neoclassicist, modernist and Art Nouveau styles present, for which it has earned the nickname "Little Berlin". The notable granaries on Mill Island and along the riverside belong to one of the most recognized timber-framed landmarks in Poland. (Full article...)

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Poland now

Recent events

On 21 May, Jan A.P. Kaczmarek (pictured), a composer best known for writing film scores, died at the age of 71.
On 10 May, an unusually spectacular aurora borealis was observed in large parts of Poland due to an intense solar storm.
On 8 April, local elections were held throughout Poland, with run-off votes in some municipalities held on 21 April.
On 9 January, police entered the Presidential Palace in Warsaw to arrest former Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński (Law and Justice party) and his former deputy, both of whom had been sentenced to two year's jail for abuse of power. On 23 January, they were both were pardoned by the President Andrzej Duda.