Timeline Poland
Return to home
CIA
Factbook:
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/pl.html
Emulate: http://www.emulateme.com/poland.htm
History: http://www.poloniatoday.com/historyix.htm
Links: http://wings.buffalo.edu/info-poland/web/history/index.shtml
Photos: Jewish life in Poland: 1864-1939: http://www.tachna.com/jlp/
Tourism: www.polandtour.org
TravelDocs: http://www.traveldocs.com/pl/index.htm
USLC: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/petoc.html
Wikipedia: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Polish_history
c4,000BC The
archeological site at Oslonki uncovered some 30 longhouses and 80
graves.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.73)
800-900 In Poland a 9th century edict forbade Jews
from baking. The law was supposedly circumvented by boiling bread and
then toasting it. This process is believed to have led to the creation
of the bagel.
(WSJ, 11/29/08, p.W11)
1000 In Cracow the Wawel Castle
was built overlooking the Vistula River.
(WSJ, 7/13/00, p.A24)
1058 Nov 28, Kazimierz I
Restaurator (b.1015), grand duke of Poland (1034-58), died. He
succeeded in reuniting the central Polish lands under the hegemony of
the Holy Roman Empire, but he was never crowned king.
(MC, 11/28/01)(www.infoplease.com)
1079 May 9, Stanislaus, Polish
bishop of Cracow, was murdered.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1194 May 5, Kazimierz II, the
Justified, grand duke of Poland (1177-94), died.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1241 Apr 9, In the Battle of
Liegnitz, Silesia, Mongol armies defeated the Poles and Germans. In
this year the Mongols defeated the Germans and invaded Poland and
Hungary. The death of their leader Ughetai (Ogedei) forced them to
withdraw from Europe.
(HN, 4/9/98)(TOH)
1241 A trumpeter in Krakow,
Poland, was shot through the throat by an archer as he warned the city
of a fast-approaching Mongol army.
(SSFC, 12/28/03, p.C6)
1267 Feb 9, Synod of Breslau
ordered Jews of Silesia to wear special caps.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1268 Jan 21, Pope Clement IV gave
permission to Poland’s King Premislus II to take over Lithuania and
establish Catholicism.
(LHC, 1/18/03)
1271 Sep 17, Wenceslas II, king of
Bohemia & Poland (1278-1305), was born.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1306 Aug 8, King Wenceslas of
Poland was murdered.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1309 Apr 30, Kazimierz III de
Great, King of Poland (1333-70), was born.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1333 Mar 2, Wladyslaw IV, the
Short One, Great, duke, king of Poland, died.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1342 Sep 26, John I, ruler of
Poland, died.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1349 May 28, 60 Jews were murdered
in Breslau, Silesia.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1360 Jul 25, Jews were expelled
from Breslau, Silesia.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1364 In Cracow the Jagiellonian
University was founded. [see 1400]
(PG-Comm)
1370 Nov 5, Kazimierz III
("The Great"), king of Poland (1333-70), died at 61.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1370 Louis I (the Great)(b.1326),
King of Hungary (1342-1382), became King of Poland.
(HN, 3/5/98)(MC, 3/5/02)
1382 Sep 10, Louis I, the Great,
King of Hungary and Poland, died.
(MC, 9/10/01)
c1384 The Polish princess Hedwig
was crowned at age 10.
(SFC, 6/9/97, p.A10)
1385 Jan 18, A Lithuanian
delegation under Skirgaila arrived in Cracow to ask for the hand of
Jadvyga on behalf of Jogaila.
(LHC, 1/18/03)
1385 Aug 14, In Lithuania Jogaila
and his brothers signed a treaty with Poland at Krievos Castle. Here he
agreed to convert to Christianity and to seek the conversion of all of
Lithuania and that then Lithuania and Poland would unite. The treaty
also included an agreement to free all captive Catholics and to help
Poland regain all the land it had lost to the German Knights. Vytautas
urged Jogaila to go to Poland and leave Lithuania to be ruled by
himself.
(H of L, 1931, p.48)(Ist. L.H., 1948, p. 68)
1386 Feb 2, Jogaila was elected
King of Poland.
(LHC, 2/2/03)
1386 Feb 15, Christianity was
introduced to Lithuania when Grand Duke Jogaila and Vytautas underwent
a token Baptism at the cathedral in Cracow. Jogaila had married Queen
Jadvyga (12) and was crowned King in Poland. Together they began to
rule from Cracow over Lithuania and Poland. Jogaila submitted to
restrictions that no major decisions could be made without the
authorization of the Polish nobility.
(Dr, 7/96, V1#1, p.5)(Ist. L.H., 1948, p. 69)(DrEE,
11/9/96, p.6)
1386 Mar 4, Jogaila was
crowned King of Poland.
(LHC, 3/4/03)
1387 Feb 17, Jogaila founded the
archdiocese of Vilnius and provided land for the Bishop’s headquarters.
(LHC, 2/17/03)
1387 Feb 22, Jogaila issued
a proclamation for all Lithuanians to accept Catholicism.
(LHC, 2/22/03)
1388 Mar 12, Pope Urban VI
authorized Poznan’s Bishop Dobrogost to establish a Vilnius archdiocese.
(LHC, 3/12/03)
c1399 In Poland Queen Hedwig died
in childbirth at age 25.
(SFC, 6/9/97, p.A10)
1400 In Cracow the Jagiellonian
University was re-founded with funds and a permanent income by the
royal couple. [see 1364]
(WSJ, 7/13/00, p.A24)(PG-Comm)
1401 Jan 18, In Lithuania Vytautas
and the country’s dukes submitted documents to Poland that Vytautas
would rule Lithuania as a vassal to Poland and return the country to
Poland upon his death.
(LHC, 1/18/03)
1407 Jan 21, Duke Vytautas led
Polish and German forces for a 2nd time against the Duchy of Moscow.
(LHC, 1/18/03)
1407 Oct 26, Mobs attacked the
Jewish community of Cracow.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1410 Jul 15, Lithuanian-Polish
forces defeated the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Tannenberg,
Prussia, thereby halting the Knights’ eastward expansion along the
Baltic and hastening their decline. Vytautas and Jogaila with hired
mercenaries from Belarus along with Tartars and Czechs defeated the
Teutonic Knights between Grunvald (Zalgiriai) and Tannenberg southeast
of Malburg. Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen and many of his nobles
were killed. The war officially ended with the Treaty of Thorn in which
the Knights gave up Zemaitija to Vytautas.
(COE)(H of L, 1931, p.52)(DrEE, 11/9/96, p.6)
1411 Feb 1, Lithuania, Poland and
the Knights of the Cross signed the Torun Peace Treaty. Samogitia was
returned to Lithuania. The Teutonic Knights had regrouped and gone to
battle against Vytautas and Jogaila. Peace was signed at Torun and
western Lithuania was returned, but not Klaipeda (Memel).
(Ist. L.H., 1948, p. 71)(LHC, 1/31/03)
1416 Feb 13, A Lithuanian and
Polish delegation read their grievances against the Teutonic Knights at
the Church Council at Constance.
(LHC, 2/13/03)
1423 Mar 30, Lithuania and Poland
reached an agreement at Kezmark with Emperor Sigismund, who agreed to
recall Sigismund Kaributa from Poland.
(LHC, 3/30/03)
1453 Jul 4, 41 Jewish martyrs were
burned at stake at Breslau, Poland.
(Maggio)
1454 Mar 6, Casimir
proclaimed the attachment of Prussia to Polish rule. This began a
13-year war over Prussia (1454-1466).
(LHC,3/6/03)
1466 Oct 19, The peace of Torun
ended the 13-year War of the Cities (1454-1466), between the Teutonic
knights and their own disaffected subjects in Prussia. The Peace of
Thorn (Torún) ended the war between the Teutonic knights (a
German military and religious order) and their subjects in Prussia, led
by King Casimir IV (1427-1492) of Poland. Poland was given
Pomerelia and West Prussia, and the knights retained East Prussia, with
a new capital at Königsberg (Kaliningrad). The knights, formerly
strictly a German order, were forced to accept Poles as members and
their grand master became a vassal of the Polish king.
(HN,
10/19/98)(http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/T/TeutonKn.html)
1473 Feb 19, The astronomer
Copernicus (1473-1543) was born in Torun, Poland. He promulgated the
theory that the earth and the planets move around the sun.
(WUB, 1994, p. 322)(HN, 2/19/98)(AP, 2/19/98)
1481 Aug 30, Two Latvian monarchs
were executed for conspiracy to murder Polish king Kazimierz IV.
(MC, 8/30/01)
1484 Mar 4, Casimir
(Kazimierz), the son of Lithuania’s Grand Duke Casimir, died in Grodno
at age 25. In 1602 he was declared a saint and protector of Lithuania.
St. Casimir was born Oct 3,1458, in Cracow.
(LHC, 3/4/03)
1486 Mar 4, Jogaila was crowned
king of Poland.
(LC, 1998, p.12)
1495 Feb 15, Lithuanian Grand Duke
Alexander wed Duchess Elena of Moscow.
(LHC, 2/15/03)
1496 A Polish edict, pushed by
Krakow’s gentile bakers, banned Jews from selling bagels within the
city limits.
(www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=1075)
1497 Mar 9, Nicolaus Copernicus
(1473-1543), Polish astronomer, made the 1st recorded astronomical
observation.
(WUD, 1994 p.322)(MC, 3/9/02)
1501 Jul 27, Copernicus was
formally installed as canon of Frauenberg Cathedral.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1505 Feb 26, In Brest
Polish Chancellor J. Laski invited the Lithuanian government to
reconfirm and expand the 1501 Union of Melnik, but the offer was
rejected.
(LHC, 2/26/03)
1514 Vasily III, ruler of Moscow,
captured Smolensk from Poland.
(TL-MB, p.10)
1515 Jul 22, Emperor Maximillian
and Vladislav of Bohemia forged an alliance between the Habsburg
[Austria] and Jagiello [Polish-Lithuanian] dynasties in Vienna.
(HN, 7/22/98)
1543 May 24, Nicolaus Copernicus,
astronomer, died in Poland. His book, "On the Revolutions of the
Heavenly Orbs," (De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium), proof of a
sun-centered universe, was printed just before he died. Although he did
say that the earth rotated once a day and did revolve around the sun
once a year, he kept 2 features of the old Aristotelian system: one
involved uniform circular motion, and the other was quintessential
matter, for which such motion was said to be natural. In 1916 the
Catholic clergy placed the book on its “Index of Prohibited Books.” In
2004 Owen Gingerich authored "The Book Nobody Read," an examination of
how the ideas of Copernicus spread. In 2006 William T. Vollmann
authored “Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and The Revolutions of the
Heavenly Spheres.” In 2008 his remains, buried in a Roman Catholic
Cathedral in Frombork, Poland, were positively identified using DNA
evidence..
(NG, 3/1990, p. 117)(HN, 5/24/98)(WSJ, 3/5/04,
p.W8)(NH, 4/1/04, p.66)(SSFC, 2/5/06, p.M1)(AP, 11/20/08)
1547 Mar 21, Matthew Stryjkovski
(d.c1592), the 1st author of a printed history of Lithuania, was born
in Strykov, Poland.
(LHC, 3/21/03)
1548 Apr 1, Sigismund I, the Elder
(81), King of Poland, died.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.17)(MC, 4/1/02)
1561 Poland-Lithuania gaining
control over Livonia. In response Sweden seized the territory of
Estonia with the major port of Reval. Denmark, also invested in
the war, seized the Livonian Islands.
(http://tinyurl.com/bngyy)
1563 Feb 15, Ivan IV led Russian
forces in the takeover of Polocka, defended under the leadership of
Stanislav Davaina.
(LHC, 2/15/03)
1564 Mar 13, Zigmantas
Augustas gave over to Poland his rights to Lithuania and supported the
Warsaw parliament recess and summons for the 1st representatives on
talks regarding union.
(LHC, 3/13/03)
1566 Mar 11, The 2nd
Lithuanian statutes went into effect and upheld a democracy of
landowners. The Statute of Lithuania gave the Seimas legislative power.
The parliament had developed since Casimir ascended to the Polish
throne. It was composed of an upper chamber or Council of Lords and
assemblies of noblemen. They assembled in Vilnius or Brest-Litovsk.
(DrEE, 10/5/96, p.5)(LHC, 3/11/03)
1569 Feb 28, The Lithuanian
delegation pulled out of union talks with Poland and departed Lublin.
(LHC, 2/28/03)
1569 Mar 12, Zigmantas
Augustas broke away from Lithuania and attached Volinija and Palenki to
Poland.
(LHC, 3/12/03)
1569 Jul 1, The Lublin Union was
signed and direct rule over Lithuania was passed to Poland. Lithuania
maintained certain ministers, laws, money and an army. The territories
of Volinija, Kiev and Podolija were transferred to Polish rule.
(H of L, 1931, p.72-74)(LC, 1998, p.20)
1570 Apr 14, Polish Calvinists,
Lutherans, Hernhutters unified against the Jesuits.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1573 Jan 28, In Warsaw a
confederation act acknowledged freedom of religion in Lithuania and
Poland.
(LHC, 1/28/03)
1573 May 11, Henry of Anjou became
the first elected king of Poland.
(HN, 5/11/98)
1581 Jan 14, The city of Riga
joined the Polish-Lithuanian union.
(LHC, 1/14/03)
1581 Mar 1,The Warsaw
government accepted the statutes of the Lithuanian high tribunal.
(LHC, 3/1/03)
1581 Stephen Bathory, King of
Poland, invaded Russia.
(TL-MB, p.23)
1581 Sweden and Poland overran
Livonia (a territory that included southern Latvia and northern
Estonia).
(TL-MB, p.23)
1582 Jan 15, Russia ceded Livonia
and Estonia to Poland, and lost access to Baltic.
(MC, 1/15/02)
1582 Aug 10, Russia ended its
25-year war with Poland. Russia and Poland concluded the Peace of
Jam-Zapolski under which Russia lost access to the Baltic and
surrendered Livonia and Estonia to Poland.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.23)(HN, 8/10/98)
1586 Stephen Bathory, King of
Poland, died and was succeeded by Sigismund III.
(TL-MB, p.24)
1587 Aug 19, Sigismund III was
chosen to be the king of Poland.
(HN, 8/19/98)
1588 Jan 28, King Sigismund Vaza
upheld the 3rd Lithuanian Statute that until 1795 stood as the
fundamental code of law. In practice it was active until 1840.
(LHC, 1/28/03)
1595 Feb 24, Mathias
Casimir Sarbievius, poet and prof. at Vilnius Univ., was born in
Sarbev, Poland. He died in Warsaw Apr 2, 1640.
(LHC, 2/23/03)
1609 Mar 21, Jan II Kazimierz,
cardinal, King of Poland (1648-68), was born.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1609 Rabbi Loew (b.1525), also
known as the Maharal of Prague, died. He became well-remembered for a
legend about him creating a clay figure known as Golem, which he is
said to have brought to life to protect Prague's Jewish community from
attacks.
(AP, 8/5/09)
1610 Feb 14, Polish king Sigismund
III forced Dimitri #2 and the Romanov family to sign covenant against
Czar Vasili Shuishki (sequel to story of "Boris Godunov").
(MC, 2/14/02)
1610 Jul 4, Battle at Klushino:
King Sigismund III of Poland beat Russia & Sweden.
(Maggio)
1610 Aug 27, Polish King Wladyslaw
was crowned king of Russia.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1610 In Cracow (Krakow), Poland,
bagels were listed in the community regulations as a suitable gift for
pregnant women.
(SFC, 10/16/96, zz1 p.6)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
1610 Sigismund III ruled Poland.
(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.29)
1612 Oct 27, A Polish army which
invaded Russia capitulated to Prince Dimitri Pojarski and his Cossacks.
(HN, 10/27/98)
1612 Nov 4, Russia drove Catholic
Poles and Lithuanians out of Moscow. This marked the end of the "Time
of Troubles," a period of popular uprisings and fighting between
noblemen and pretenders to the throne. Russian Orthodox Church
celebrated this day as the victory of the forces of Eastern Orthodoxy
over the forces of Western Catholicism. In 2005 Russia chose this day
for the new “People’s Unity Day” holiday.
(http://bildt.blogspot.com/2005/11/meaning-of-1612.html)(Econ,
11/12/05, p.56)(Econ, 3/17/07, p.65)
1632 King Ladislas IV began his
rule.
(PCh, 1992, p.241)
1634 Feb 19, At the Battle at
Smolensk Polish king Wladyslaw IV beat the Russians. [see Mar 1]
(MC, 2/19/02)
1634 Mar 1, Battle at Smolensk;
Polish King Wladyslaw IV beat the Russians. [see Feb 19]
(SC, 3/1/02)
1638 In Cracow the Isaac Synagogue
was founded.
(WSJ, 7/13/00, p.A24)
1648 May 20, King Ladislas IV died
at age 55. His Jesuit brother (39) took rule as John Casimir II.
(PCh, 1992, p.241)
1648 May 6, Battle at Zolty
Wody-Bohdan: Chmielricki's Cossacks beat John II Casimir.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1648 Jun 24, Cossacks slaughtered
2,000 Jews and 600 Polish Catholics in Ukraine.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1648 Sep 21, In Poland at the
Battle at Pilawce Bohdan Chmielricki beat John II Casimir.
(PCh, 1992, p.241)(MC, 9/21/01)
1648-1649 It is estimated that 100,000-200,000 Jews
died in the Chmielnicki (Khmelnytskyi) revolt that lasted from
1648-1649. This wave of destruction is considered the first modern
pogrom.
(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Poland.html)
1655 Aug 29, Swedish king Karel X
Gustaaf occupied Warsaw.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1655 Oct 15, Jews of Lublin,
Poland, were massacred.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1656 Jan 17, Prussian Duke
Frederick Wilhelm withdrew ties with Lithuania and Poland and
acknowledged vassal status with Sweden.
(LHC, 1/17/03)
1656 Oct 24, Treaty of Vilnius
(Lithuania): Russia and Poland signed an anti-Swedish covenant.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1659 Mar 22, The Warsaw parliament
decided to issue metal currency, shillings, for Lithuania and Poland.
(LHC, 3/22/03)
1667 Jan 30, Lithuania, Poland and
Russia signed a 13.5 year treaty at Andrusov, near Smolensk. Russia
received Smolensk and Kiev.
(LHC, 1/30/03)
1667 May 9, Marie Louise de
Gonzague-Nevers, French Queen of Poland (1645-48), died.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1668 Sep 16, King John Casimer II
of Poland abdicated the throne.
(HN, 9/16/98)(PCh, 1992, p.241)
1670 May 12, August II (d.1733),
the Strong One, King of Poland (355 children) and elector of Saxony,
was born.
(MC, 5/12/02)(SSFC, 4/25/04, p.D12)
1674 May 20, John Sobieski became
Poland’s first King. [see 1573]
(HN, 5/20/98)
1674 May 21, Gen. Jan Sobieski was
chosen King of Poland. [see May 20]
(MC, 5/21/02)
1675 Jun 11, France and Poland
formed an alliance.
(AP, 6/11/03)
1675 Wojciech Bobowski (b.1610),
Polish-Jewish musician and dragoman, died. He had been taken prisoner
by Crimean Tartars and was sold to the Ottoman court where he converted
to Islam and served as an interpreter, treasurer and musician. He
translated the Bible into Turkish and composed Turkish psalms.
(Econ, 9/15/07,
p.104)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojciech_Bobowski)
1679 Apr 3, Edmund Halley met
Johannes Hevelius in Danzig.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1681 Jan 8, The treaty of Radzin
ended a five year war between the Turks and the allied countries of
Russia and Poland.
(HN, 1/8/99)
1683 Feb 12, A Christian Army, led
by Charles, the Duke of Lorraine and King John Sobieski of Poland,
routed a huge Ottoman army surrounding Vienna.
(HN, 2/12/99)
1683 Sep 12, A combined Austrian
and Polish army defeated the Ottoman Turks at Kahlenberg and lifted the
siege on Vienna, Austria. Prince Eugene of Savoy helped repel an
invasion of Vienna, Austria, by Turkish forces. Marco d'Aviano, sent by
Pope Innocent XI to unite the outnumbered Christian troops, spurred
them to victory. The Turks left behind sacks of coffee which the
Christians found too bitter, so they sweetened it with honey and milk
and named the drink cappuccino after the Capuchin order of monks to
which d'Aviano belonged. An Austrian baker created a crescent-shaped
roll, the Kipfel, to celebrate the victory. Empress Maria Theresa later
took it to France where it became the croissant. In 2006 John Stoye
authored “The Siege of Vienna.”
(Hem., Dec. '95, p.69)(WSJ, 3/27/96, p.A-16)(HN,
9/12/98)(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A1)(Reuters, 4/28/03)(WSJ, 6/3/03, p.D5) (WSJ,
12/6/06, p.D12)
1696 Jun 17, Jan Sobieski (72),
King of Lithuania and Poland (1674-96), died.
(MC, 6/17/02)(LHC, 5/21/03)
1696 August III (d.1763), son of
August II, was born. He was crowned King of Lithuania and Poland in
1734.
(SSFC, 4/25/04, p.D12)(WSJ, 6/1/04, p.D8)
1700 Feb 22, Augustus II
(the Strong), elector of Saxony (1694-1733) and King of Poland
(1697-1706, 1709-1733), with the help of the Saxon army attacked
Swedish controlled Riga. This began the Northern War (1700-1721).
(LHC,
2/22/03)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_II_the_Strong)
1709 Augustus II (the Strong),
Elector of Saxony, had ordered alchemist Johann Friedrich Bottger to
re-create the formula for oriental porcelain. Bottger was imprisoned
and joined physicist Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus in a search for
the formula. Tschirnhaus died but Bottger discovered the formula in
this year. within 2 years a factory was established in Meissen’s
Albrechtsburg and Meissenware became Europe’s first hard-paste
porcelain.
(Hem, 6/96, p.111)(SSFC, 4/25/04, p.D12)
1710 Feb 4, August II with the
support of the Russian army was recognized by the parliament in Warsaw
as King of Lithuania and Poland.
(LHC, 2/4/03)
1710 In Germany Baron Johann
Bottger invented the Meissen hard-paste porcelain at the Meissen
factory on the river Elbe under the auspices of Augustus, King of
Poland. [see 1709] Kandler was a virtuoso sculptor and brilliant artist
at Meissen and was responsible for the figurine of Mazzetin and
Columbine, 2 characters from the Italian comedia dell ‘arte.
(WSJ, 8/28/98, p.W10)
1716 Nov
3, In the Pacification Treaty of Warsaw Czar Peter the Great
(1672-1725) guaranteed Saxon monarch August I's (1682-1718) Polish
kingdom.
(DoW, 1999, p.373)
1717 Jan 30, Surrounded by the
Russian army the Lithuanian-Polish parliament reduced its army by half
and acknowledged Russian protection.
(LHC, 1/30/03)
1723 Augustus the Strong, ruler of
Saxony and King of Poland, ordered the expansion of the Royal Residence
Palace treasure chamber in Dresden, long called the Green Vault because
of the color of its walls.
(http://tinyurl.com/gp7uy)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.95)
1725 August II, elector of Saxony
and King of Poland, gifted a selection of Meissen porcelain from his
own collection to the king of Sardinia.
(WSJ, 11/21/07, p.D10)
1732 Jan 17, Stanislaw II August
Poniatowski, last king of Poland (1764-95), was born.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1733 Feb 1, August II (b.1670),
the Strong, King of Lithuania and Poland (355 children) and elector of
Saxony, died in Warsaw.
(MC, 2/1/02)(LHC, 2/1/03)(SSFC, 4/25/04, p.D12)
1733 Oct 10, France declared war
on Austria over the question of Polish succession.
(HN, 10/10/98)
1734 Jan 24, In Cracow the 2nd
last king of Lithuania and Poland, August III, was crowned.
(LHC, 1/24/03)
1734 Mar 9, The Russians took
Danzig (Gdansk) in Poland.
(HN, 3/9/99)
1734-1823 Adam Czartoryski, a friend of Rousseau and
Ben Franklin and luminary of the enlightenment in Poland, was an art
collector and displayed his art at the family estate at Pulawy.
(WSJ, 7/30/97, p.A13)
1736 Jan 27, Stanislaw Lesheinski
gave up the Polish-Lithuanian throne.
(LHC, 1/27/03)
1738 Dec 9, Jews were expelled
from Breslau, Silesia.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1741 Jun 11, Austria ceded most of
Silesia to Prussia by Treaty of Breslau.
(AP, 6/11/03)
1745 Dec 25, Prussia and Austria
signed the Treaty of Dresden. This gave much of Silesia to the
Prussians.
(MC, 12/25/01)
1746 Tadeusz Kosciusko (d1817),
Polish patriot and general in the American Revolutionary army, was born
in Lithuania. [see Feb 4, 1747]
(WUD, 1994 p.794)
1747 Feb 4, Tadeusz Kosciusko,
patriot, American Revolution hero (built West Point), was born in
Poland. [see 1746]
(MC, 2/4/02)
1747 Mar 4, Casimir Pulaski
(d.1779), Count, American Revolutionary War General, was born in
Poland. Pulaski led troops in some of the bloodiest fighting of the
Revolutionary War.
(HN, 3/4/98)(SC, 3/4/02)
1762 Aug 5, Russia, Prussia and
Austria signed a treaty agreeing on the partition of Poland.
(HN, 8/5/98)
1763 Oct 5, August III (b.1796),
son of August II, died. He was crowned King of Lithuania and Poland in
1734.
(SSFC, 4/25/04, p.D12)(WSJ, 6/1/04, p.D8)
1767-1780 Bernardo Belotto (Il Canaletto), Italian
topographical view painter, worked as court painter in Warsaw for
Stanislaus II Augustus Poniatowski, the last King of Poland.
(WSJ, 9/13/01, p.A18)
1768 Feb 24,
Lithuania-Poland signed an eternal friendship treaty with Russia along
with a guarantee of protection. Lithuania and Poland agreed not to
change their state system.
(LHC, 2/23/03)
1772 Upon the partition of
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the Kingdom of Galicia and
Lodomeria, or simply Galicia, became the largest, most populous, and
northernmost province of Austria where it remained until the
dissolution of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_(Central_Europe))
1774 Tadeusz Kosciusko (b.1746)
came to America from Poland after an unsuccessful love affair. He
became a hero fighting the British in the American war for Independence.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, T7)
1775 Jan 17, 9 old women were
burned as witches for causing bad harvests in Kalisk, Poland.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1775 Jan 22, Marshal Oscar von
Lubomirski expelled Jews from Warsaw, Poland.
(MC, 1/22/02)
1775 Feb 22, Jews were expelled
from the outskirts of Warsaw, Poland.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1775 Szymon Antoni Sobiekrajski,
cartographer to King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, calculated that
the center of Europe was in Suchowola, Eastern Poland.
(WSJ, 7/14/04, p.A7)
1779 Oct 11, Polish nobleman
General Casimir Pulaski died two days after being mortally wounded
while fighting for American independence during the Revolutionary War
Battle of Savannah, Ga. Brig. Gen. Casimir Pulaski had come to America
in 1777. In 2005 an attempt to confirm his remains using DNA was
inconclusive.
(AH, 10/04, p.15)(AP, 6/24/05)(AP, 10/11/07)
1783 Mar 5, King Stanislaus
Augustus Poniatowski granted rights to Jews of Kovno.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1784 May 25, Jews were expelled
from Warsaw by Marshall Mniszek.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1785 Mar 31, Antanas Tyzenhauzas
(B.1733), Lithuanian agricultural organizer, died in Warsaw.
(LHC, 3/31/03)
1786 Mar 22, Joachim Lelevelis was
born in Warsaw. He became a renowned historian and Prof. at Vilnius
Univ. He died May 29, 1861 in Paris.
(LHC, 3/22/03)
1788 Oct 6, The Polish Diet
decided to hold a four year session.
(HN, 10/6/98)
1790s Tadeusz Kosciusko returned
to Poland and united the country in the battle against Prussian and
Russian domination.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, T7)
1791 May 3, Poland adopted a new
Constitution. It was designed to redress long-standing political
defects of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and its traditional
system of "Golden Liberty." The constitution put Lithuania under Polish
domination. It is generally regarded as Europe's first and the world's
second modern codified national constitution, following the 1788
ratification of the US Constitution.
(SFC, 4/25/09,
p.B1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_May_3,_1791)(Voruta
#27-28, 7/1996, p.13)
1792 May 18, Russian troops
invaded Poland.
(HN, 5/18/98)
1792 May 19, Russian army entered
Poland.
(DTnet 5/19/97)
1793 Jan 23, Prussia and Russia
signed an accord on the 2nd partition of Lithuania and Poland. The 2nd
partition of Poland. Polish patriots had attempted to devise a new
constitution which was recognized by Austria and Prussia, but Russia
did not recognize it and invaded. Prussia in turn invaded and the two
agreed to a partition that left only the central portion of Poland
independent.
(WUD, 1994, p.1677)(LHC, 1/23/03)
1793 Jan 23, The 2nd partition of
Poland. Polish patriots had attempted to devise a new constitution
which was recognized by Austria and Prussia, but Russia did not
recognize it and invaded. Prussia in turn invaded and the two agreed to
a partition that left only the central portion of Poland independent.
(WUD, 1994, p.1677)
1793 Apr 17, The Battle of Warsaw
was fought.
(HN, 4/17/98)
1794 Mar 23, Lieutenant-General
Tadeusz Kosciusko returned to Poland.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1794 Mar 24, In Cracow a
revolutionary manifesto was proclaimed. The Lithuanian and Polish
nobility under the leadership of Tadas Kosciusko revolted against
Russian control.
(H of L, 1931, p. 81-82)(LHC, 3/23/03)
1794 Apr 7, At the battle of
Raclawice the revolutionary forces of Tadeusz Kosciusko defeated the
imperial armies.
(DrEE, 9/21/96, p.5)
1794 Apr 19, Tadeusz Kosciusko
forced Russians out of Warsaw.
(HN, 4/19/97)
1794 Oct 10, The Russian Army
under Gen’l. Alexander Suvorov took Warsaw and captured Tadeus
Kosciusko at Maciejowice. T. Vavzeckis was became the new commander of
the revolutionary forces.
(Voruta #27-28, 7/1996, p.5)(HN, 10/10/98)
1794 Nov 16, Warsaw capitulated to
the Russian Army and the revolution ended.
(Voruta #27-28, 7/1996, p.5)
1795 Jan 3, The 3rd division of
the Lithuanian Polish Republic was made between Russia and Austria.
(Voruta #27-28, Jul 1996, p.5)
1795 Mar 22, A Lithuanian
delegation under L. Tiskevicius went to Jekaterina II in Petersburg and
declared that Lithuania’s union with Poland was ended.
(Voruta #27-28, Jul 1996, p.5)
1795 Stanislaus Augustus
Poniatowski, the last king of Poland, was forced to abdicate.
(WSJ, 2/15/00, p.A24)
1795-1921 The state of Poland was gobbled up by
Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Prussia.
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1797 Jan 15, In St. Petersburg
Russia, Prussia and Austria signed and act that terminated the
Lithuanian-Polish state.
(LHC, 1/15/03)
1806 Nov 28, French forces led by
Joachim Murat entered Warsaw.
(AP, 11/28/06)
1807 Feb 8, At Eylau, Poland,
Napoleon’s Marshal Pierre Agureau attacked Russian forces in a heavy
snowstorm. Like Napoleon, to whom he is most often compared, Alexsandr
Suvorov believed that opportunities in battle are created by fortune
but exploited by intelligence, experience and an intuitive eye. To him,
mastery of the art and science of war was not, therefore, purely
instinctive. Napoleon’s forces ran low on supplies at Eylau and ate
their horses.
(HN, 2/7/97)(WSJ, 9/21/05, p.A8)
1807 Napoleon gave Danzig (later
Gdansk) 6 years of formal independence.
(WSJ, 8/31/98, p.A4)
1808 Oct 17, The political rights
of Jews was suspended in Duchy of Warsaw.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1810 Mar 1, Frederic Chopin
(d.1849), Polish composer and pianist, was born. He studied in Poland
but spent most of his adult life in Paris. He met George Sand in Paris
in 1838 and they were together until 1847. His works include the
Waltz #2 in C# Minor (1835).
(BAAC PN, Chambers, 1/8/96)(HN, 3/1/98)
1812 Jun 24, Napoleon crossed the
Nieman River [in Lithuania] and invaded Russia. The French army under
Napoleon crossed the Nemunas River near Kaunas. Prior to his march into
Russia, Napoleon had taken land from Russia and returned it to Polish
control in Warsaw. This assured him safe passage through Poland and
Lithuania on his way to Russia. In 1824 the book “History of the
Expedition to Russia, Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year
1812” by Count de Segur, a general in Napoleon’s army, was first
published. An English translation edited by Gerard Shelley was
published in 1928.
(HN, 6/24/98)(WSJ, 8/25/07, p.P9)(H of L, 1931,
p.83-84)
1813 Feb 18, Czar Alexander
entered Warsaw at the head of his Army.
(HN, 2/18/99)
1813 Prussia took over Danzig.
(WSJ, 8/31/98, p.A4)
1815 Nov 27, Cracow, Poland,
declared itself a free republic.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1817 Oct 15, Tadeusz AB Kosciusko
(b.1746), Polish Lt-Gen. and American Revolution freedom fighter, died.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1820 In southern Poland Jan
Kutschera opened the Sczcawnica Zdroj health resort. He sold it in 1929
to the Hungarian Szalay family, which turned it into a fashionable
place. Josef Szalay bequeathed it to Krakow’s Academy of Arts and
Sciences, which sold it to Count Stadnicki in 1909. Stadnicki (d.1982
at 99) was ousted by the communists in 1948. By 2008 his heirs had
regained control of the spa and invested $4.5 million in restoration.
(SSFC, 8/17/08, p.F7)
1829 May, In Poland Niccolo
Paganini (1782-1840), Italian violinist, performed in concert in
Warsaw. Frederic Chopin (19) was so impressed that he proceeded to
compose a series of piano studies a la Paganini. Chopin’s 27 Etudes
later became a cornerstone of every gifted pianist’s repertoire.
(WSJ, 11/15/08, p.W11)
1830 Nicholas I ruthlessly
repressed the insurrection in Poland.
(WSJ, 4/13/99, p.A16)
1831 Feb 20, Polish
revolutionaries defeated the Russians in the Battle of Growchow.
(HN, 2/19/98)
1831 Feb 25, The Polish army
halted the Russian advance into their country at the Battle of Grochow.
(HN, 2/25/99)
1831 Mar 26, An interim government
was set up in Raseiniai as a Lithuanian revolt against Russian rule
began. There was a major uprising led by the Polish nobility in Warsaw
against Russian rule. Russian forces began to march through Lithuania
and this led many people of Lithuania to join in the rebellion against
Russian rule. Serf uprisings also followed. The rebellion was
eventually quelled by Russian force.
(H of L, 1931, p.85-86)(LHC, 3/26/03)
1831 May 26, Russians defeated the
Poles at battle of Ostrolenska.
(HN, 5/26/98)
1831 Jul 24, Maria Agata
Szymanowska (41), composer, died.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1832 Feb 26, The Polish
constitution was abolished by Czar Nicholas I.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1846 Feb 23, Polish
revolutionaries marched on Cracow, but were defeated.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1846 May 5, Henryk Sienkiewicz
(d.1916), author (Quo Vadis, Nobel 1905), was born in Poland:
"The greater the philosopher, the harder it is for him to answer the
questions of common people."
(AP, 2/5/97)(MC, 5/5/02)
1850 May 16, Johannes von
Mikulica-Radecki, Polish surgical pioneer, was born.
(HN, 5/16/01)
1850s Polish immigrants began
arriving in Chicago as job opportunities abounded.
(WSJ, 6/2/03, p.A1)
1852 Ignacy Lukasiewicz, a
druggist, found oil seeping from the ground and in an attempt to make
vodka distilled it to produce the first kerosene.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, Z1 p.2)
1857 Nov 2, Joseph F.F. Babinski,
Polish-French neurologist (Babinski reflex), was born.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1857 Dec 3, Joseph Conrad
(d.1924), novelist, was born in Berdychiv, Poland, as Teodor Jozef
Konrad Korzeniowski. He is best known for “Heart of Darkness.” His work
“The Secret Agent” had a profound effect on Unabomber Theodore J.
Kaszynski in the late 20th cent. Conrad also wrote the short story “The
Informer.”
(SFC, 7/9/96, p.A3)(HN, 12/3/98)(AP, 12/3/07)
1858 August Czartoryski (d.1893)
was born as a Polish prince. He became a Salesian priest and was
beatified in 2004.
(AP, 4/25/04)
1860 Nov 18, Ignacy Jan Paderewski
(d.1941), composer and 3rd prime minister of Poland (1919), was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacy_Jan_Paderewski)
1861 Feb 27, In the Warsaw
massacre Russian troops fired on a crowd protesting Russian rule over
Poland. Five marchers were killed.
(AP, 2/27/98)
1863 Jan 22, The interim
Lithuanian government in Warsaw announced an uprising against Russian
rule. The uprising aspired to restore the Polish-Lithuanian state and
was supported by large numbers of peasants.
(DrEE, 9/14/96, p.4)(LHC, 1/22/03)
1864 Mar 2, Russian Czar
Alexander II upheld reforms in Poland that gave landholders ownership
of their lands.
(LHC,3/1/03)
1867 Nov 7, Marie Curie (d.1934),
Polish-born French scientist, was born in Warsaw as Marya Salomee
Sklodowska. Her discoveries included polonium, radium, which she
isolated from pitchblende, and the radioactivity of thorium. She was
awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1903 with her husband, and in
chemistry in 1911. "You cannot hope to build a better world without
improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own
improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for
all humanity."
(AHD, 1971, p.323)(AP, 10/26/98)(HN, 11/7/98)
1876 Helena Modrzejewska,
celebrated actress, left for America with her husband Count Karol
Chapowski, their son, Rudolf (15), the young journalist Henryk
Sienkiewicz and a few friends. Helena proceeded to establish herself on
the American stage as Helena Modjeska. In 2000 Susan Sontag planned to
publish an historical novel based on Helena: "In America."
(SFC, 1/6/00, p.E1)
1877 Jul 5, Wanda A. Landowska,
Warsaw Poland, harpsichordist (Musique Ancienne), was born.
(MC, 7/5/02)
1880 Mar 31, Henryk Wieniawski
(44), Polish violist, composer, died.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1880 Nov 1, Sholem Asch,
Polish-born American novelist, was born. He wrote "The Nazarene" and
"The Apostle, Mary."
(HN, 11/1/99)
1881 Aug 20, Nikolay Yakovlevich
Myaskovsky, composer, was born in Poland of Russian military parentage.
(MC, 8/20/02)(Internet)
1882 Aug 17, Samuel Goldwyn,
American movie mogul who helped start MGM (Metro Goldwyn Mayer), was
born as Schmuel Gelbfisz in Warsaw, Poland.
(HN, 8/17/00)
1882 Elie Nadelman (d.1946),
Polish-born sculptor, was born. He moved to Paris in 1904 and to the US
in 1914 with the support of Helena Rubenstein. His work included "The
Dancer" (1920-1924).
(WSJ, 5/15/03, p.D8)
1883 Jan 13, Fire in circus
Ferroni in Berditschoft, Poland, killed 430.
(MC, 1/13/02)
1884 Aug 3, Louis Gruenberg,
composer (Daniel Jazz), was born near Brest Litovsk, Poland.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1885 Sep 15, Juliusz Zarebski,
Polish composer, died at 31.
(http://www.dolmetsch.com/cdefsz.htm)
1885 Dr. Lazarus Ludwig Zamenhof
(1859-1917), Polish ophthalmologist, invented the artificial language
known as Esperanto. [see 1887]
(SFCM, 6/8/03, p.18)
1886 Jan 28, Artur Rubinstein,
pianist, was born in Lodz, Poland.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1886 Oct 16, David Ben-Gurion
(d.1973), Israeli statesman, was born in Plonsk, Poland. He was the 1st
PM of Israel and served from 1948-53 and in 1955.
(HN, 10/16/00)(MC, 10/16/01)
1887 The artificial international
language called Esperanto was introduced in a pamphlet published by
Polish ophthalmologist Dr. Lazarus Ludwig Zamenhof. Zamenhof
(1859-1917), invented the artificial language known as Esperanto in
1885. Zamenhof used the pen name "Esperanto," which means "the
hoper" in the new language. Esperanto vocabulary is comprised primarily
of words with Latin roots and words common to several languages.
Esperanto is less complicated than an earlier attempt at artificial
language called Volapuk. While Esperanto associations formed around the
world, it never became widely accepted.
(Wired, 8/96, p.84)(HNQ, 6/15/98)
1891 Aug 22, Jacque Lipchitz
(d.1973), sculptor, was born in Poland.
(HN, 8/22/00)
1891 Oct 12, Edith Stein was born
to a Jewish family at Breslau. Through her passionate study of
philosophy she searched after truth and found it in reading the
autobiography of St. Teresa of Jesus. In 1922 she was baptized a
Catholic and in 1933 she entered the Carmel of Cologne where she took
the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was gassed and cremated at
Auschwitz on August 9, 1942, during the Nazi persecution and died a
martyr for the Christian faith after having offered her holocaust for
the people of Israel.
(WWW, Teresa Benedicta, 10/6/98)
1900 Mar 21, Paul Kletzki, Polish
violinist, composer, conductor, was born.
(MC, 3/21/02)
c1900 The 1999 novel "The River
Midnight" by Lilian Nattel was about life in the Polish shtetl of
Blaszka at the turn of the century.
(USAT, 3/24/99, p.7E)
1901 Ignacy Jan Paderewski
(1860-1941), Polish composer, built Warsaw’s Hotel Bristol.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacy_Jan_Paderewski)
1904 Jul 14, Isaac Singer (1991),
Polish-born American author (Enemies-Nobel 1978), was born. "God is the
sum of all possibilities." "When you betray somebody else, you also
betray yourself."
(AP, 3/30/97)(AP, 6/4/99)(HN, 7/14/01)(MC, 7/14/02)
1905 Oct 20, A Great General
Strike in Russia began and lasted 11 days.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1905 Oct 20, Russian tsar allowed
Polish people to speak Polish.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz, Polish
author, won the Nobel Prize and wrote the third work of his trilogy
"With Fire and Sword." It was preceded by "Pan Michael" and "The
Deluge." The first 2 books were made into films during the 1960s and
1970s. Filming of the 3rd work began in 1997.
(SFC,11/18/97, p.E2)(SFC, 7/8/99, p.E3)
1906 Aug 26, Albert Bruce Sabin,
U.S. virologist, born in Poland. In 1955, he developed an oral vaccine
against polio.
(RTH, 8/26/99)
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote the
third work of his trilogy "With Fire and Sword." It was preceded by
"Pan Michael" and "The Deluge." The first 2 books were made into films
during the 1960s and 1970s. Filming of the 3rd work began in 1997.
(SFC,11/18/97, p.E2)
1908 Sep 9, Russia grabbed part of
Poland.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1908-1996 General Witold Urbanowicz, Polish fighter
ace. He destroyed 28 German and Japanese fighter planes and fought in
combat over Poland, in the Battle of Britain and in China.
(SFC, 8/21/96, p.A20)
1909-1966 Stanislaw J. Lec, Polish poet, author and
satirist: "THINK before you think!"
(AP, 8/28/98)
1909-1984 Anna Swir, Polish poet. "A poet should be
as sensitive as an aching tooth."
(SFEC, 11/10/96, DB p.8)
1911 Jun 30, Czeslaw Milosz
(d.2004), Polish poet and critic and Nobel winner, was born in
Lithuania. In 2001 his Polish "Milosz’s ABC’s" was published in
English.
(SFC, 3/21/01, p.C1)(HN, 6/30/01)
1912 The People’s Hall was built
in Wroclaw, capital of Lower Silesia. The city is at the foot of the
Sudety Mountains on the banks of the Odra River.
(DrEE, 9/21/96, p.1)
1913 Nov 26, Russian kingdom
forbade Polish congregation of speakers.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1914 Aug 11, Jews were expelled
from Mitchenick, Poland.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1914 Oct 21, Battle of Warsaw
ended with a German defeat.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1914 Nov 25, German Field Marshal
Fredrich von Hindenburg called off Lodz offensive 40 miles from Warsaw,
Poland. The Russians lost 90,000 to the Germans’ 35,000 in two weeks of
fighting.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1914 Dec 6, German troops over ran
Lodz.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1915 Aug 5, The Austro-German Army
took Warsaw, in present-day Poland, on the Eastern Front.
(HN, 8/5/98)
1915 Sep 2, Austro-German armies
took Grodno, Poland.
(HN, 9/2/98)
1916 Aug 11, The Russia army took
Stanislau, Poland, from the Germans.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1917 Jan 14, The Provisional
Parliament was established in Poland.
(HN, 1/14/99)
1918 Feb 14, Warsaw demonstrators
protested the transfer of Polish territory to the Ukraine.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1918 Mar 3, Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire and Russia signed the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ended Russian participation in World War
I. Germany and Austria forced Soviet Russia to sign the Peace of Brest,
which called for the establishment of 5 independent countries: Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk,
which ended Russian participation in World War I, was annulled by the
November 1918 armistice. The treaty deprived the Soviets of White
Russia.
(HN, 3/3/99)(LHC, 3/1/03)(AP, 3/3/08)
1918 Sep 22, Henryk Szeryng,
violinist (Brahms Concerto), was born in Zelazowa Wola, Poland.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1918 Nov 11, The Second Polish
Republic declared its independence.
(SFC, 11/13/96, p.C2)(AP, 11/11/08)
1918 Nov 21, Polish soldiers
organized a pogrom against Jews of Galicia, Poland.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1918 Nov 22, Polish forces
attacked the Jewish community of Lemberg (Lvov).
(MC, 11/22/01)
1919 Jan 17, Pianist and statesman
Ignace Jan Paderewski became the first premier of the newly created
republic of Poland.
(AP, 1/17/07)
1919 Feb 17, Germany signed an
armistice giving up territory in Poland.
(HN, 2/17/98)
1919 Apr 5, Polish Army executed
35 young Jews.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1919 Apr 20, Polish Army captured
Vilno (Vilnius), Lithuania from Soviet Army.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1919 Jimmy Winkfield (1882-1974),
former US Kentucky Derby winner, helped lead 262 horses from the Odessa
(Ukraine) race track to Warsaw, Poland, in a 3-month journey in front
of the advancing Red Army.
(SSFC, 5/7/06,
p.P8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Winkfield)
1920 Jan 10, The League of Nations
was established as the Treaty of Versailles went into effect. The Free
City of Danzig (Gdansk) was constituted by the treaty.
(WUD, 1994, p.367)(AHD, 1971, p.744)(AP, 1/10/98)
1920 Jan 15, The United States
approved a $150 million loan to Poland, Austria and Armenia to aid in
their war with the Russian communists.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1920 Mar 7, The Bolsheviks opened
a major offensive on the Polish front.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1920 May 18, Pope John Paul II
(d.2005) was born as Karol Jozef Wojtyla, in Wadowice, Poland. In 1978
he became the 264th Roman Catholic pope. He was the first non-Italian
Roman Catholic pope since the Renaissance and wrote the international
bestseller "Crossing the Threshold."
(SFC, 5/19/97, p.A13)(HN, 5/18/99)(SSFC, 4/3/05,
p.A12)
1920 Jul 4, Poland gave de facto
recognition to Lithuania.
(LC, 1998, p.20)
1920 Jul 8, The Galician Soviet
Socialist Republic (Galician SSR) was formed and lasted to September
21, 1920, during the Polish-Soviet War within the area of the
South-Western front of the Red Army.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_Soviet_Socialist_Republic)
1920 Aug 10, Allies recognized
Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1921 Apr 9, Russo-Polish conflict
ended with the signing of the Riga Treaty.
(HN, 4/9/98)
1921 The Solec Hospital in central
Warsaw was built.
(WSJ, 1/15/97, p.A1)
1922 Feb 20, Vilnius, Lithuania,
agreed to separate from Poland.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1922 Mar 24, The Polish parliament
endorsed the transfer of the Vilnius area to Lithuania.
(LHC, 3/23/03)
1923 Feb 3, The National Union
committee divided a neutral zone between Lithuania and Poland and drew
a final line of demarcation.
(LHC, 2/3/03)
1923 Mar 15, An
ambassador's conference set the demarcation line between Lithuania and
Poland as a national border, which Lithuania did not recognize.
(LHC, 3/15/03)
1923 Apr 18, Poland annexed
Central Lithuania.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1923 Jul 6, Wojciech Jaruzelski,
Polish general, pres. (1989-90), was born.
(MC, 7/6/02)
1925 Feb 10, Poland made an accord
with the Vatican and the archdiocese of Vilnius was revived as one of 5
Polish dioceses.
(LHC, 2/10/03)
1926 Feb 25, Poland demanded a
permanent seat on the League Council.
(HN, 2/25/98)
1926 May 29, Charles Denner, actor
(And Now My Love), was born in Tarnow, Poland.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1926 Jun 1, Ignacy Mocicki was
elected president of Poland.
(DTnet, 6/1/97)
1926 Jun 19, The opera “King
Roger,” composed by Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937),
premiered in Warsaw.
(Econ, 8/23/08,
p.73)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Roger)
1927 Aug 7, Maia Wojciechowska
(d.2002) was born in Warsaw. She moved to the US in 1942 and became an
acclaimed author of children’s books. Her work included the memoir
"Till the Break of Day: Memories, 1939-1942."
(SFC, 7/1/02, p.B5)
1928 Mar 28, Zbigniew Brzezinski,
US national security advisor (Carter), was born in Warsaw.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1928 Janusz Korczak (d.1942),
pediatrician and writer, authored “King Matt the First,” the story of
an orphan boy who becomes king and enacts laws favorable to children.
(SSFC, 10/10/04, Par p.17)
1931 Jan 24, The League of Nations
rebuked Poland for the mistreatment of a German minority in Upper
Silesia.
(HN, 1/24/99)
1933 Mar 6, Poland occupied free
city Danzig (Gdansk).
(MC, 3/6/02)
1933 Jun 14, Jerzy Kosinski,
Polish-American novelist (The Painted Bird, Being There), was born.
(HN, 6/14/01)
1933 Aug 18, Roman Polanski,
Polish film director best known for Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown, was
born.
(HN, 8/18/98)
1933 Krzysztof Penderecki, Polish
composer, was born.
(AP, 11/23/02)
1934 Jan 26, Germany signed a
10-year non-aggression pact with Poland, breaking the French alliance
system.
(WUD, 1994, p.1682)(HN, 1/26/99)
1934 Jul 4, "Madame" Marie
Curie-Sklodovska, Polish-born French chemist and Nobel Prize winner,
died in Paris of leukemia caused by her long exposure to radiation. In
1937 Eve Curie authored "Madame Curie, a Biography." In 2004 Barbara
Goldsmith authored “Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie.”
(ON, 3/00,
p.2)(http://myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=madameCurie)(SSFC, 12/5/04,
p.E2)
1935 Aug 7, In Danzig
(Gdansk) 60% of voters agreed to Nazism (NSDAP).
(MC, 8/7/02)
1938 Mar 17, The Polish
government presented an ultimatum to Lithuania to establish diplomatic
ties. (LHC, 3/17/03)
1938 Mar 19, Lithuania
accepted a Polish peace ultimatum and established diplomatic ties.
(HN, 3/19/98)(LHC, 3/19/03)
1938 Apr 5, Anti-Jewish riots
broke out in Dabrowa, Poland.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1938 Sep 29, British, French,
German and Italian leaders signed the Munich Agreement, which was aimed
at appeasing Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi annexation of
Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, inhabited by a German-speaking minority.
The treaty ceded three areas of Czechoslovakia to other powers: the
Sudetenland was annexed into Germany, the Teschen district was given to
Poland, and parts of Slovakia went to Hungary. British PM Neville
Chamberlain gained a brief peace agreement from Hitler at Munich and
without consulting the Czechs agreed that Nazi forces could occupy
Sudetenland. Some mark this "appeasement policy" as the decisive event
of the century. Chamberlain predicted "peace in our time." French PM
Edouard Daladier was very depressed from the meeting. In 1980 Telford
Taylor published "Munich: The Price of Peace." It is a detailed
political & diplomatic history of the 1930's in Europe, culminating
in the Munich conference. Taylor later helped write the rules for
Nuremberg Trials. In 2008 David Vaughan authored “Battle for the
Airwaves: Radio and the 1938 Munich Crises.”
(http://www.humboldt.edu/~rescuers/book/Chlup/chluplinks/munich.html)(SFC,
6/9/96, Z1 p.5)(SFC, 6/16/96, Z1 p.6)(WSJ, 6/8/98, p.A21)(AP,
9/29/06)(SFC, 5/26/98, p.B2)(Econ, 10/11/08, p.115)
1938 Nov 26, Poland renewed a
non-aggression pact with the USSR to protect against a German invasion.
(HN, 11/26/98)
1939 Mar 21, Nazi Germany demanded
Gdansk (Danzig) from Poland.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1939 Mar 31, Britain and France
agreed to support Poland if Germany threatened to invade. Seven French
islands were annexed by Japan.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1939 Apr 6, Great Britain and
Poland signed a military pact.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1939 Apr 28, Hitler claimed the
German-Polish non-attack treaty to be still in effect.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1939 May 23, Hitler proclaimed he
wants to move into Poland.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1939 Aug 23, German Foreign
Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Commissar for Foreign
Affairs Vyacheslav M. Molotov signed a Treaty of Non-Aggression, the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact freeing Hitler to invade Poland and Stalin to
invade Finland. Secret protocols, made public years later, were added
that assigned Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia to be within the
Soviet sphere of influence. Poland was partitioned along the rivers
Narev, Vistula and San. Germany retained Lithuania enlarged by the
inclusion of Vilnius. Just days after the signing, Germany invaded
Poland, and by the end of September, both powers had claimed sections
of Poland.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A16)(AP, 8/23/97) (HNPD,
8/22/98)(HN, 8/23/98)
1939 Aug 25, Britain and France
signed a treaty with Poland promising military assistance should the
Germans invade.
(ON, 11/05, p.3)
1939 Aug 27, Nazi Germany demanded
Danzig and Polish corridor.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1939 Aug 31, There was a staged
"Polish" assault on radio station in Gleiwitz by Nazis dressed as Poles
to "provoke" war, an excuse for Germany to invade Poland the next day
to start World War II.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1939 Sep, 1, At 4:40 a.m., World
War II began. The Germans attacked Poland with their strategy of
Blitzkrieg, or lightning war. The war started at dawn with salvos from
the cruiser Schleswig-Holstein at the Polish garrison in Gdansk. In
1989 Donald Cameron Watt authored “How War Came.”
(WSJ, 4/26/95, p.A-16)(AP, 9/1/97)(WSJ, 1/14/07,
p.P8)
1939 Sep 1, US Sen. William Borah
of Idaho said 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this
might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is
— the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly
discredited by history." In 2008 Pres. Bush quoted these words in a
speech to the Israeli Knesset.
(AP, 5/17/08)
1939 Sep 4, German troops stormed
into Danzig (Gdansk).
(MC, 9/4/01)
1939 Sep 4, The Polish ghetto of
Mir was exterminated.
(MC, 9/4/01)
1939 Sep 8, Gen. Von Reichenau's
panzer division reached the suburbs of Warsaw.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1939 Sep 9, Nazi army reached
Warsaw.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1939 Sep 15, The Polish submarine
Orzel arrived in Tallinn, Estonia, after escaping the German invasion
of Poland.
(HN, 9/15/99)
1939 Sep 17, The Soviet Union
attacked Poland, more than two weeks after Nazi Germany launched its
assault. They took 217,000 Poles prisoner and occupied eastern Poland
within a week with losses of 737 dead and 2,000 wounded. The Polish
submarine Orzel escaped from internment and went on to fight the
Germans against long odds.
(AP, 9/17/97)(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)(HN, 9/17/98)(MC,
9/17/01)
1939 Sep 19, Wehrmacht (German
regular army) murdered 100 Jews in Lukov, Poland.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1939 Sep 27, Germany occupied
Warsaw. Poland surrendered after 19 days of resistance to invading
forces from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Poland had endured a
brutal 3 day bombing campaign by the German Luftwaffe.
(AP, 9/27/97)(HN, 9/27/98)
1939 Sep 28, The Boundary and
Friendship Treaty between the USSR and Germany was supplemented by
secret protocols to amend the secret protocols of Aug 23. Among other
things Lithuania was reassigned to the Soviet sphere of influence.
Poland’s partition line was moved eastwards from the Vistula line to
the line of the Bug. Germany kept a small part of south-west Lithuania,
the Uznemune region. A separate Soviet mutual defense pact was signed
with Estonia that allowed 25,000 Soviet troops to be stationed there.
(DrEE, 9/28/96, p.3)(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)(DrEE,
10/26/96, p.4)(AP, 9/28/97)
1939 Sep 29, Germany and the
Soviet Union reached an agreement on the division of Poland. [see Sep
28]
(HN, 9/29/98)
1939 Sep 30, Germany and Russia
agreed to partition Poland. [see Sep 28,29]
(MC, 9/30/01)
1939 Oct 4, Last Polish troops
surrendered to German Wehrmacht.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1939 Oct 8, Germany annexed
Western Poland.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1939 Oct 26, Polish Jews were
forced into obligatory work service.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1939 Oct 30, USSR and Germany
agreed on partitioning Poland. Hitler deported Jews.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1939 Nov 12, Jews in Lodz Poland
were ordered to wear yellow star of David.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1939 Nov 15, Nazis began their
mass murder of Warsaw Jews.
(MC, 11/15/01)
1939 Nov 23, Hans Frank, the Nazi
Gov. of Poland, required Jews to wear a blue star.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1939 Nov 28, Nazi Gov-Gen of
Poland, Hans Frank organized Judenrat.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1939 Dec 1, Reichsfuhrer-SS
Heinrich Himmler ordered the deportation of Polish Jews.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1939 Dec 11, New anti Jewish
measurements in Poland were proclaimed.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1940 Jan 23, Pianist Jan Ignaz
Paderewski became premier of Polish government in exile.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1940 Jan 25, Nazis established a
Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland.
(MC, 1/25/02)
1940 Apr 28, Rudolf Hoess became
commandant of concentration camp Auschwitz.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1940 Mar 5, Stalin among others
signed an Order for the massacre at Katyn, Poland. Soviet agents shot
21,768 Polish military officers, intellectuals and priests who had been
taken prisoner during the invasion. Between April and May some 25,700
(15,000) Polish citizens were massacred by the Soviets in the Katyn and
Miednoje (Mednoye) forests on the outskirts of Moscow and at Kharkov in
western Russia (later Ukraine). Some 14,700 Polish officers were
identified by their uniforms. Excavations of the sites began in 1994.
6,313 Polish officers were all shot in the back of the head near
Mednoye. 9,000 Russians were also massacred at the site. In 2008
Andrzej Wajda directed the film “Katyn.” In 2004 Russia's top military
prosecutor closed the investigation after concluding that the massacre
did not constitute genocide. In 2009 Russia's Supreme Court rejected
appeals to re-open the investigation.
(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.16)(SFEC, 9/3/00, p.A18)(AP,
3/6/05)(Econ, 6/21/08, p.65)(AP, 1/29/09)
1940 Apr, The Germans sealed the
Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland, with barbed wire. Lodz at this time had
some 231,000 Jews, about one-third of the city’s population. Some
45,000 Jews from other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe were forced into
the ghetto as well as some 5,000 Gypsies. Many died under forced labor
and horrific conditions. Those remaining were killed in August, 1944.
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.A17)
1940 June 14. The Nazis opened
their concentration camp at Auschwitz. In German-occupied Poland the
first inmates arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp. They were
all Polish political prisoners.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-10)(AP, 6/14/97)(AP,
6/14/98)
1940 Oct 16, The Warsaw Ghetto was
formed by Nazi SS troops.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1940 Nov 26, The half-million Jews
of Warsaw, Poland, were forced by the Nazis to live within a walled
ghetto.
(AP, 11/26/97)
1940 Oct 31, This was the deadline
for Warsaw Jews to move into the Warsaw Ghetto.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1940 The documentary film "Lights
Out in Europe" was made by Herbert Kline. It documented Hitler's
invasion of Poland.
(SFC, 2/12/99, p.A24)
1940 "The Nazis packed 450,000
human beings into 75 square blocks of the Warsaw ghetto, then walled it
off and left them to starve."
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1940 A mass murder of Polish Jews
took place at Lublin. A report of the killings to the Red Cross was
discounted.
(SFC, 10/8/97, p.A8)
1940 The term "genetic
engineering" was coined in Poland, by Danish microbiologist A. Jost
while giving a lecture on the sex life of yeast at the Technical
Institute in Lwow, Poland.
(Internet)
1941 Feb 20, The 1st transport of
Jews to concentration camps left Plotsk, Poland.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1941 Feb 20, Nazis ordered Polish
Jews barred from using public transportation.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1941 Feb 22, IG Farben started
building Buna-Werke in the Auschwitz extermination camp.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1941 Mar 1, Himmler inspected the
Auschwitz concentration camp.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1941 May 19, New Nazi battleship
Bismarck left Gdynia, Poland.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1941 Jun 25, Germans invaded
Dubno, Poland, and encouraged the Ukrainians to do whatever they want
to 12,000 Jews living there.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1941 Jun 28, German troops
occupied Galicia, Poland.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1941 Jul 3, German soldiers arrive
in Kolomiya, (later part of Ukraine) which belonged to Poland at this
time, and tacked up posters the declared in three languages "Death to
All Jews." Blanca Rosenberg (d.1998) wrote a memoir in 1993, "To Tell
at Last," that described how she survived the Holocaust.
(SFC, 9/29/98, p.C2)
1941 Jul 10, In Jedwabne, Poland,
some 1600 Jews were herded into a barn by the local villagers and
burned to death. In 2001 Jan Tomasz authored "Neighbors: The
Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne."
(SFC, 3/16/01, p.A16)(SFC, 3/31/01, p.A12)
1941 Jul 21, Himmler ordered the
building of the Majdanek concentration camp. The camp was built in
eastern Poland as a principal site to exterminate Jews. It contained 7
gas chambers.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)(MC, 7/21/02)
1941 Sep 3, Nazis made the 1st use
of Zyclon-B gas in Auschwitz on Russian prisoners of war.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1941 Sep 6, Jews of Vilna, Poland
(Lithuania), were confined to their ghetto.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1941 Oct 8, Construction began on
the 430-acre Birkenau extermination camp, 1.5 miles away from Auschwitz.
(MC, 10/8/01)(WSJ, 8/14/02, p.A8)
1941 Oct 14, The 1st mass
deportations took place at Kovno, Lodz, Minsk & Riga.
(MC, 10/14/01)
1941 Dec 4, Nazi ordinances placed
the Jews of Poland outside protection of courts.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1941 Dec 8, The Nazi Chelmno
extermination camp opened in Poland.
(WUD, 1994 p.252)(MC, 12/8/01)
1941 At Auschwitz 152 Polish
Catholics were killed by the Nazis.
(SFC, 5/29/99, p.A14)
1941-1943 The three Jewish Bielski brothers, escaped
Nazi-occupied Poland and established a refuge in the forests of
Belarus. By the end of WWII they succeeded in saving some 1,200 men,
women and children. In 2003 Peter Duffy authored "The Bielski Brothers:
The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews and
Built a Village in the Forest." Their story was depicted in the 2009
film “Defiance,” directed by Edward Zwick.
(SSFC, 7/13/03, p.M4)(WSJ, 1/2/08, p.W1)
1942 Mar 17, Belzec Concentration
Camp opened. 30,000 Lublin Polish Jews were transported.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1942 Mar 23, Some 2,500 Jews of
Lublin were massacred or deported.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1942 Mar 25, 700 Jews of Polish
Lvov-district reached the Belzec Concentration camp.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1942 Mar 26, The Germans began
sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1942 Mar 26, The 1st 700 Jews from
Polish Lvov-district reached concentration camp Belzec. The Germans
began sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.
(HN, 3/25/98)(SS, 3/26/02)
1942 May 12, 1,500 Jews were
gassed in Auschwitz.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1942 Jun, By this month 100,000
people of the Warsaw ghetto had died due to disease or starvation.
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1942 Jul 11, In the longest
bombing raid of World War II, 1,750 British Lancaster bombers attacked
the Polish port of Danzig. The Polish submarine Orzel escaped from
internment and went on to fight the Germans against long odds.
(HN, 7/11/98)
1942 Jul 13, 5,000 Jews of Rovno,
Polish Ukraine, were executed by Nazis.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1942 Jul 13, SS shot 1,500 Jews in
Josefov, Poland.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1942 Jul
22, Nazi’s began their transport of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the
death at Treblinka.
(www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/TreblinkaEng.html)
1942 Jul 23, A 2nd Treblinka
Camp opened for the extermination of European Jews, as the evacuation
of the Warsaw ghetto began. Nearly 750,000 people died in the gas
chambers of Treblinka.
(www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/TreblinkaEng.html)
1942 Aug 5, Janusz Korczak and the
children he cared for were taken away by the Nazis from an orphanage in
the Warsaw Ghetto. He chose to stay with the children in his care as
they went together into the gas chambers at Treblinka. In 2002 a
memorial in Warsaw was dedicated to Korczak and the children.
(AP, 8/6/02)
1942 Aug 9, Carmelite nun Teresa
Benedicta of the Cross, whose given name was Edith Stein, was executed
by the Nazis at Auschwitz for her Jewish heritage. A Roman Catholic
convert from Judaism, Stein was an educator, nun, philosopher and
spiritual writer and is generally regarded as a modern saint and
martyr. Born in Germany on October 12, 1891, she joined the Carmelites
in 1934 and wrote a number of important philosophical and spiritual
works, including "Finite and Eternal Being." With Hitler's 1942 order
for the arrest of all non-Aryan Catholics, Stein was seized and shipped
to the concentration camp at Auschwitz where she died in the gas
chamber with her sister Rosa. A woman of singular intelligence and
learning, she left behind a body of writing notable for its doctrinal
richness and profound spirituality. She was beatified by Pope John Paul
II at Cologne on May 1, 1987.
(HNQ, 10/6/98)
1942 Aug 11-Sep 30, The SS began
exterminating 3,500 Jews in Zelov Lodz, Poland.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1942 Aug, Irene Nemirovsky (39),
French-Jewish author, died at Auschwitz. She had recently authored
"Suite Francaise" while waiting in rural France for what she knew was
her imminent arrest and deportation. It is a powerful account of the
effect on ordinary people of the military collapse of June 1940, the
panicked flight from Paris and the arrival of the German army. In 2004
Nemirovsky was awarded a top French literary award. In 2006 Jonathan
Weiss authored “Irene Nemirovsky: Her Life and Works.”
(AFP, 11/8/04)(SSFC, 9/24/06, p.M1)
1942 Sep 12, Free-Poland &
Belgium asked Pope to condemn Nazi-war crimes. He did not.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1942 Sep 23, At Auschwitz Nazis
began experimental gassing executions.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1942 Oct 27, In Starachowice,
Poland, Nazi soldiers separated out weak Jews from the strong. The
strong were sent to work and the weak were sent to the extermination
camp at Treblinka.
(WSJ, 11/25/03, p.A1)
1942 Oct, By this month some
300,000 occupants of the Warsaw ghetto had been shipped off to the gas
chambers at Treblinka.
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1942 Nov 11, 745 French Jews were
deported to Auschwitz.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1942 Nov 19, Bruno Schulz
(b.1892), Polish writer and graphic artist, was shot dead by a German
officer, a rival of Schulz’s German protector. In 1992 Theatre de
Complicite created their play “The Street of Crocodiles” based on the
life and work of Schulz.
(Econ, 9/1/07,
p.76)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Schulz)
1942 Nov, In Bronsk, Poland, 2500
Jews living in a shtetl (small village), were rounded up by the Nazis
and gassed at Treblinka. In 1996 a 3-hr Frontline documentary film was
aired that revisits the sight of the vanished Jewish life.
(SFC, 4/14/96, EM, p.6)(SFC, 4/17/96, p.E-3)
1942 Jan Karski (d.2000 at 86),
former Polish diplomat, disguised as a Nazi guard and snuck into the
Izbica death camp and twice entered the Warsaw Ghetto. He witnessed the
mass killings and torture of Jews and reported his story to political
and religious leaders in the West. His book "Story of a Secret State"
appeared in the US in 1944.
(SFC, 7/15/00, p.A23)
1942-1943 Irena Sendler (29), posing as a
nurse, visited the Warsaw Ghetto and persuaded parents that their
children had better chances of survival outside its walls. She and 20
helpers smuggled some 2,500 children out of the ghetto and placed them
with Polish families. In 2003 Sendler was awarded Poland's highest
order. In 2007 Sendler (97) was honored by parliament at a ceremony
during which Poland's president said she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
(AP, 11/11/03)(AP, 3/14/07)
1943 Jan 18, Jews in Warsaw Ghetto
began an uprising against the Nazis. [see Apr 19, 1943]
(MC, 1/18/02)
1943 Jan, Rutka Laskier (14) began
a diary in Bedzin, Poland, shortly before she was deported to
Auschwitz. The 60-page memoir ended in April and within a few months
Rutka was dead. Her diary was made public in 2007.
(AP, 6/4/07)
1943 Mar 2, 1st transport of Jews
from Westerbork, Netherlands, to Sobibor concentration camp.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1943 Mar 4, Transport Number 50
departed with French Jews to Majdanek and Sobibor.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1943 Mar 13, Germans closed the
Krakow ghetto in Poland.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1943 Apr 13, Nazi's discovered a
mass grave of Polish officers near Katyn. [see Apr 13, 1990]
(MC, 4/13/02)
1943 Apr 17, SS lt. General Jurgen
Stoop arrived in Warsaw.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1943 Apr 19, In Warsaw, Poland,
young Jews under Mordechai Anielewicz directed the 1st urban uprising
against the Nazis. During World War II, tens of thousands of Jews
living in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but futile battle against
Nazi forces. SS-Gen Jurgen Stroop led the destruction of the ghetto of
Warsaw: "The Warsaw Ghetto is no more!" he wrote proudly to Heinrich
Himmler and Adolf Hitler. Stroop was hanged on the site of the Warsaw
ghetto after the war. Jacek Zlatka (Jack Eisner, 1925-2003) smuggled
arms for the revolt. Eisner made a fortune in the import-export
business after the war and in 1980 authored the autobiography "The
Survivor."
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.T11)(AP, 4/19/97)(HN, 4/19/97)(MC,
4/19/02)(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.A29)
1943 Apr 30, Etty Hillesum, Dutch
diarist, died in Auschwitz.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1943 Apr, Irena Sendler
(1910-2008), Polish social worker, and her team of some 20 people saved
nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and
April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or
sending them to death camps.
(AP, 5/12/08)
1943 May 15, Warsaw ghetto
uprising ended in it's destruction by Nazi-SS troops.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1943 May 16, German troops
destroyed the synagogue of Warsaw. Jewish resistance in the Warsaw
ghetto ended after 30 days of fighting.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1943 May 30, Dr. Josef Mengele
arrived at Auschwitz as research assistant to Dr. Otmar Freiherr von
Verschuer.
(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.D6)
1943 Jun 25, Crematory III at
Birkenau, Poland, was finished.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1943 Jul 4, A Liberator II
aircraft carrying Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski, Poland’s prime minister and
chief army commander, crashed into the sea just 16 seconds after taking
off from Gibraltar. In 2008 Poland began an investigation into the
crash.
(AP, 9/3/08)
1943 Jul 11(Jun 11), Heinrich
Himmler ordered the liquidation of Polish ghettos.
(MC, 7/11/02)
1943 Jul 23, Meijer de Hond,
[Emanuel Querido], rabbi of Sobibor, died.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1943 Jul 23, Emanuel Querido,
publisher (Sobibor), died.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1943 Aug 2, In Poland at the Nazi
Treblinka concentration camp some 600 prisoners staged an uprising and
fled into the woods. Only 40 survived. In 1999 Ian MacMillan authored
"Village of a Million Spirits: A Novel of the Treblinka Uprising."
(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.5)
1943 Aug 18, Final convoy of Jews
from Salonika, Greece, arrived at Auschwitz.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1943 Sep 29, Lech Walesa, Polish
labor leader who founded the Solidarity party and later became the
president of Poland, was born.
(HN, 9/29/98)
1943 Oct 14, Some 300 of 600
prisoners escaped from the Nazi’s Sobibor death camp in Poland. The
event was later documented in the book "Escape from Sobibor" by Richard
Rashke (1982) and the film of the same name with Alan Arkin. Josef
Vallaster, an Austrian guard, was among 11 SS officers and 11
Ukrainians killed in the escape. Most of the escaped prisoners were
killed as they fled. Only 50 prisoners survived the war. Vallaster had
operated the motor that funneled gas into Sobibor’s shower rooms.
(HC, 5/30/98)(SFC, 7/11/03, p.A19)(SSFC, 2/17/08,
p.A8)
1943 Oct 23, The 1st Jewish
transport out of Rome reached Birkenau extermination camp.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1943 Nov 3, SS and police units
shot at least 6,000 Jewish inmates of the Trawniki and Dorohucza Labor
Camps.
(www.ushmm.org/wlc_ie/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007397)
1943 Nov, The 2-day "Operation
Harvest" at the Majdanek concentration camp executed men, women and
children. Nazi officer Alfons Goetzfried later admitted to having
personally shot 500 people. Over 42,000 people, mostly Jews, were
killed in the operation. In 1999 Alfons Goetzfrid (79) was convicted
for assisting in the murders of 17,000 Jews at the camp. He was
sentenced to 10 years in prison.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)(SFC, 5/21/99, p.D2)
1943 Dec
2, The 1st RSHA (Reichsicherheitshauptamt, the central SS-department)
transport out of Vienna reached Birkenau camp (Poland). One of the
powers of the RSHA was the imposition of "Protective Custody," which
meant the deportation to a concentration camp without trial or the
possibility of appeal for the victims.
(www.wsg-hist.uni-linz.ac.at/Auschwitz/HTML/RSHA.html)
1943 Some 35,000 Poles in Lviv,
Ukraine, were massacred by extreme Ukrainian nationalists. Poland
opened investigations around 2001.
(SFC, 6/27/01, p.A12)
1944 Jan 4, Soviet troops crossed
the former Polish border.
(HN, 1/4/99)
1944 Jan 11, Crakow-Plaszow
Concentration Camp was established.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1944 Jan 17, Russia rejected a
Polish proposal to negotiate a boundary dispute.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1944 Mar 7, Emanuel Ringelblum
(b.1900), Jewish historian, died in the Warsaw ghetto. He is known for
his “Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto,” “Notes on the Refugees in Zbąszyn”
chronicling the deportation of Jews from the town of Zbąszyń, and the
so-called Ringelblum's Archives of the Warsaw Ghetto. In 2009 Samuel D.
Kassow authored “Who Will Write our History? Rediscovering a Hidden
Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto.
(Econ, 3/14/09,
p.84)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Ringelblum)
1944 Apr 14, 1st Jews transported
from Athens arrived at Auschwitz.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1944 Apr-Jul, Hungarian
authorities facilitated the deportation of some 437,000 Hungarian Jews
to Auschwitz.
(SFC, 6/7/99, p.A9)(Econ, 4/24/04, p.48)
1944 May 16, The 1st of over
180,000 Hungarian Jews reached Auschwitz.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1944 May 18, The Allies in Italy
finally captured Monte Cassino, Europe's oldest Monastic house, after a
four-month struggle that claimed some 20,000 lives. The Polish 2nd Army
corps, at a staggering loss of life, captured the convent of Monte
Cassino.
(HN, 5/18/99)(AP, 5/18/02)(SC, 5/18/02)
1944 May 19, 240 gypsies were
transported to Auschwitz from Westerbork, Neth.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1944 Jun 20, Nazis began mass
extermination of Jews at Auschwitz.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1944 Jul 23, Soviet troops took
Lublin, Poland, as the German army retreated.
(HN, 7/23/02)
1944 Jul 24, Soviet forces
liberated the Majdanek concentration camp.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1944 Aug 1-1944 Oct 2, The Warsaw
Uprising was fought. The Polish underground began an uprising against
the occupying German army, as the Red Army approaches Warsaw. The
revolt lasted two months before collapsing. US Air Force Groups dropped
medicine and food to the Polish freedom fighters under heavy fire from
German fighter planes. The supply planes were also shot at by Soviet
gunners. American dead were buried in the military cemetery at Poltava,
Ukraine. The uprising ended with the Nazis killing 250,000 people.
During the 63-day uprising the insurgents, largely ill-armed teenagers,
organized a postal service to help city residents get information to
relatives. Marek Edelman (1909-2009) was among the commanders of the
uprising and managed to survive the war.
(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p. 23)(AP,
8/1/97)(HN, 8/1/98)(AP, 3/6/08)(Econ, 10/10/09, p.91)
1944 Aug 4, A Halifax JP-276A took
off on its final flight from the Italian city of Brindisi around 8
p.m., to drop weapons, ammunition and medical supplies for resistance
fighters involved in the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis. The plane
was shot down by Poland's Nazis occupiers and crashed near the town of
Dabrowa Tarnowska, in southern Poland. Remnants were recovered in 2006
and the remains of the crew, 5 Canadians and 2 Britons, were formally
buried in 2007.
(AP, 10/4/07)
1944 Aug 6, The deportation of
70,000 Jews from Lodz. Poland, to Auschwitz began.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1944 Oct 2, Nazi troops crushed
the 2-month-old (63 days) Warsaw Uprising, during which a
quarter-million people were killed.
(AP, 10/2/97)
1944 Oct 15, Philip Mechanicus,
journalist, was executed in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1944 Oct 17 Hans Krasa,
Czech-Jewish composer, died at Auschwitz. The opera Brundibar by Krasa
was 1st performed at a Prague orphanage. It had been intended for a
1938 government competition. It was later performed at the Terezin
concentration camp.
(WSJ, 2/7/03, p.D8)
1944 Oct 30, Anne Frank (of Diary
fame) was deported from Auschwitz to Belsen.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1944 Oct 30, Last transport for
Auschwitz arrived in Birkenau.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1944 Nov 2, Auschwitz began
gassing inmates.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1944 Wilhelm "Wilm"
Hosenfeld (1895-1952), a German officer in the Wehrmacht
stationed in Warsaw for most of the war, encountered Wladyslaw Szpilman
(1911-2000), when the musician was looking for somewhere to hide after
the city was razed in the brutal Nazi suppression of the Warsaw
Uprising. Szpilman's experiences became the basis his autobiography and
for Roman Polanski's 2002 film "The Pianist," for which Polanski won
the best director Oscar and Adrien Brody took the best actor prize for
his portrayal of Szpilman. Hosenfeld saved two Jews from the Nazi
Holocaust but he died in obscurity in a Soviet prison after World War
II.
(AP,
6/19/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilm_Hosenfeld)
1944 By this year 360,000 of the
500,000 inmates of the Nazi Majdanek concentration camp in eastern
Poland had perished in the gas chambers or from brutal treatment by the
guards.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)
1944 Rudolf Vrba (1925-2006), a
Jew from Czechoslovakia, and Alfred Wetzler, a Hungarian Jewish leader,
escaped from the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz. They made their way to a
Czech safe house and dictated a report that became known as the
Auschwitz Protocols, a seminal Holocaust document containing eyewitness
accounts of the atrocities. In 1963 Vrba published a memoir entitled,
"I Cannot Forget," which was eventually released in six languages.
(AP, 4/14/06)
1945 Jan 13, The Red Army opened
an offensive in South Poland, crashing 25 miles through the German
lines.
(HN, 1/13/99)
1945 Jan 17, Soviet and Polish
forces liberated Warsaw during World War II.
(AP, 1/17/98)(HN, 1/17/99)
1945 Jan 18, The Red Army freed
Krakow from Nazi occupation. [see Jan 19]
(SSFC, 4/3/05, p.A12)
1945 Jan 19, The Red Army captured
Lodz, Krakow, and Tarnow.
(HN, 1/19/99)
1945 Jan 27, The Soviet army
arrived at Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland, and found the Nazi
concentration camp and crematorium. It is now believed that 1 million
Jews were murdered here, up to 75,000 Polish Christians, 21,000
Gypsies, and 15,000 Soviet POWs.
(www.krakow-info.com/auschwit.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/aqhbc)
1945 Jan 30, Nazi SS guards shot
down an estimated 4,000 Jewish prisoners on the Baltic coast at
Palmnicken, Kaliningrad. The town was later renamed by the Russians to
Yantarny. Some 7,000 prisoners had been marched 25 miles from
Koenigsberg to a vacant lock factory at Palmnicken where they were
mowed down with machine guns. The prisoners had been vacated from a
network of 30 camps that made up Poland's Stutthoff concentration camp.
90% of the Jews were women from Lithuania and Hungary.
(SFC, 1/31/00, p.C1)
1945 Jan, The Red Army drove the
Wehrmacht out of Poland and demolished Danzig (Gdansk) by bomb and
gunfire.
(SFEC, 5/24/98, p.T4)
1945 Mar 31, The U.S. and Britain
barred a Soviet supported provisional regime in Warsaw from entering
the U.N. meeting in San Francisco.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1945 Aug 13, 35 Jews sacrificed
their lives to blow up a Nazi rubber plant in Silesia.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1945 Aug 16, The communist
dominated Polish government signed a treaty with the USSR to formally
cede eastern territories, including Galicia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_areas_annexed_by_the_Soviet_Union)(Econ,
7/7/07, p.51)
1945 Adam Zagajewski, poet, was
born in Poland. In 1988 he began teaching at the Univ. of Houston as
well as in Krakow. His books included “A Defense of Ardor,” a
collection of essays translated to English in 2004.
(SSFC, 11/28/04, p.E2)
1945 Summer’s end: The Ukrainian
Trophy Brigade occupied the castle of Count von Althmann in Silesia,
Poland. It was packed with Nazi archival records.
(WSJ, 3/5/97, p.A18)
1945 Wladyslaw Szpilman published
his Warsaw ghetto memoir "The Pianist," right after the war. An English
edition was released in 1999.
(WSJ, 9/2/99,
p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wladyslaw_Szpilman)
1945 The allies settled on the
Oder-Neisse line as the new Western border of Poland. It cut through
the German city of Guben, called Gubin on the Polish side.
(Econ, 4/24/04, p.50)
1945 The German city of Breslau on
the Oder River was turned over to Poland and renamed Wroclaw.
(SFC, 7/14/97, p.A10)
1946 Jun-Sept. 100,000 Jews left
Poland and traveled through Czechoslovakia to displaced persons camps
in Germany. Their story is told in some detail by Bernard Wasserstein
in his: Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe Since 1945.
(WSJ, 3/20/96, p.A-14)
1946 July 4, A postwar pogrom in
Kielce, Poland, left 42 people, mostly Jews, dead and 50 wounded. Army
and security officers took part in the attack that was sparked by the
false story of Walenty Blaszcyk that his son had been kidnapped by
Jews. The event is considered as Europe’s last pogrom. In 2001 Jan
Tomascz Gross authored “Neighbors,” the story of the Kielce Jews, who
were herded into a barn that was set alight.
(WSJ, 3/20/96, p.A-14)(SFC,10/17/97, p.D3)(Econ,
2/2/08, p.59)
1946 Kazimierz Brandys authored
"The Rebellious City," a novel about Warsaw's struggle against the
Nazis.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.D6)
c1946 After 1945 the Communist
seized nearly $50 billion worth of property left by Polish Jews and
Polish citizens, who had left the country. A 2000 panel voted to
excluded non-citizens from property compensation.
(SFC, 1/800, p.C1)
1947 Jerzy Giedroyc (d.2000 at
94), Polish émigré, founded the Kultura literary magazine
outside of Paris. Co-founder Zofia Hertz (d.2003 at 92) continued the
magazine.
(SFC, 9/19/00, p.B2)(SSFC, 6/22/03, p.A27)
1947 Poland decreed that Auschwitz
be preserved as a museum and testimony to Nazi atrocities.
(WSJ, 8/14/02, p.A8)
1948 Jun, In Rome Father Karol
Jozef Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, completed his thesis “The
Problems of Faith in the Works of St. John of the Cross” and earned a
doctorate in philosophy. In July he returned to Poland as an assistant
pastor at Niegowic.
(SSFC, 4/3/05, p.A12)
1949 Jan 25, Poland joined the
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.
(EWH, 1968, p.1200)
1949 Jun 8, Emmanuel Ax, pianist
(Artur Rubinstein Comp-1974), was born in Lvov, Poland.
(MC, 6/8/02)
1949 Sep 30, Poland denounced its
treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia and confirmed its adherence to
Soviet and Cominform policy.
(EWH, 1968, p.1200)
1949 Oct 22, In Dwor, Poland, the
Danzig-Warsaw express derailed and more than 200 people were killed.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)(AP, 2/18/04)
1949 Nov 7, Soviet Marshal
Konstantin Rokossovsky was appointed minister of defense and
commander-in-chief of he Polish army.
(EWH, 1968, p.1200)
1950 Mar 20, The government of
Poland decided to confiscate the property of Polish church.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950)
1950 The Polish Catholic church
and government signed an accord over relations. The Catholic Church was
dispossessed of its principal charitable organization, Caritas,
including numerous residential facilities and community resources such
as soup kitchens and missions in rail stations.
(http://tinyurl.com/fw8yd)(http://tinyurl.com/fpsdk)
1951 Sep 8, Jurgen Stroop, Nazi
exterminator of Warsaw Ghetto, was hanged on site of the ghetto.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1951 "A World Apart" by Polish
author Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski was first published in English. It
told of his years in a soviet gulag. He later founded the literary
magazine "Kultura" that was banned in Poland until 1989 and in 1990
wrote "Journal Written at Night."
(WSJ, 6/17/96, p.A12)
1952 A new constitution was
adopted.
(SFC, 5/26/97, p.A10)
1953 Sep 26, Polish government
fired and imprisoned Cardinal Wyszynski.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1953 Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski
(d.2000 at age 81) authored "A World Apart," an account of his
experiences in a Soviet labor camp from 1940-1942.
(SFC, 7/6/00, p.C3)
1953 Czeslaw Milosz,
émigré Polish poet, published “The Captive Mind,” in
which he unpicked the mangling effects of communist thought.
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.76)
1954 Nov 15, Aleksander
Kwasniewski was born.
1954 Kazimierz Brandys authored
"The Citizens," a novel about Polish intelligentsia embracing the new
Communist system.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.D6)
1954 The Polish film "The Loop"
was directed by Wojciech Has.
(SFC, 10/4/00, p.B2)
1955 May 14, Representatives from
eight Communist bloc countries: Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland & Romania, signed the
Warsaw Pact in Poland. Andras Hegedues signed for Hungary.
(AP, 5/14/97)(SFC, 10/26/99, p.B4)(MC, 5/14/02)
1955 Jun 29, The Soviet Union sent
tanks to Pozan, Poland, to put down anti-Communist demonstrations.
(HN, 6/29/98)
1956 Apr 6, Polish communist
Gomulka was freed from prison.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1957 Kazimierz Brandys authored
"Mother of Kings," a novel about the dishonesty and dangers of
communism.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.D6)
1957 The film "Kanal" was made by
Andrzej Wajda.
(SFEC, 3/19/00, DB p.52)
1958 Nov 27, Artur Rodzinski (66),
Polish conductor and composer, died.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1958 The film "Ashes and Diamonds"
was made by Andrzej Wajda.
(SFEC, 3/19/00, DB p.52)
1958 Roman Polanski shot his
student film "Two men and a Wardrobe."
(WSJ, 10/29/03, p.D10)
1959 The Polish film "Shared Room"
was directed by Wojciech Has.
(SFC, 10/4/00, p.B2)
1961 The Polish film "Knife in the
Water" was the debut work by Roman Polanski.
(SFC, 7/8/99, p.E3)
1962 Jun, Supersam, Poland’s first
large self-service food store, opened in Warsaw. The structure was
designed by a team led by Jerzy Hryniewiecki. The hanging roof was
designed by Waclaw Zalewski. In 1991 a management team won control over
the store. In 2006 wrecking crews were halted as enthusiasts called for
its preservation as a historical site.
(WSJ, 10/4/06, p.D13)
1964 The Polish film "The
Saragosso Manuscript" starred Zbigniev Cybulski (d.1967 at 39) and was
directed by Wojciech Has (d.2000 at 75). It was based on the novel "The
Manuscript," found in Saragosso and written by Jan Potocki, a Polish
expatriate.
(SFEM, 8/1/99, p.2)(SFC, 8/5/99, p.B1,5)(SFC,
10/4/00, p.B2)
1965 Aug 19, Auschwitz trials
ended with only 6 life sentences.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1967 May 29, Pope Paul VI named 27
new cardinals, including Karol Wojtyla, archbishop of Krakow, who later
became Pope John Paul II.
(SSFC, 4/3/05, p.A13)
1968 Mar 8, Some 1500 students
demonstrated in Warsaw following a government ban on the performance of
a play by Adam Mickiewicz, (Dziady), written in 1824). Within four
days, protests spread to Krakow, Lublin, Gliwice, Wroclaw, Gdansk,
Poznan, and Lodz.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Polish_political_crisis)
1968 Mar, In Poland some 4,000
students marched through Warsaw yelling: "Down with the dictatorship."
(SFC, 5/22/98,
p.C12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Polish_political_crisis)
1968 Aug 3, The Bratislava
statement conceded Czechoslovakia’s right to pursue its own path. The
conference was held in Bratislava, Slovakia, for representatives of the
communist and workers' parties of the People's Republic of Bulgaria,
the Hungarian People's Republic, the German Democratic Republic, the
Polish People's Republic, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and
the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
(WUD, 1994,
p.1687)(http://library.thinkquest.org/C001155/documents/doc41.htm)
1968 Aug 20, Some 650,000 Soviet
Union and other Warsaw Pact troops began invading Czechoslovakia to
crush the "Prague Spring" liberalization drive of Alexander Dubcek's
regime.
(AP, 8/20/97)(MC, 8/20/02)
1968 Sep 8, In Poland Ryszard
Siwiec (b.1909), accountant, teacher and anti-communist protester, self
immolated in front of some 10,000 spectators during the national
harvest festival at the Dziesieciolecia football stadium. He died 4
days later at a hospital.
(Econ, 10/10/09,
p.55)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryszard_Siwiec)
1968 The Polish film "Everything
for Sale" was directed by Andrzej Wajda.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, DB p.44)
1968 The Polish film "The Doll"
was directed by Wojciech Has.
(SFC, 10/4/00, p.B2)
1970 Dec 7, Poland and West
Germany signed a pact renouncing use of force to settle disputes,
recognizing the Oder-Neisse River as Poland's western frontier, and
acknowledging transfer to Poland of 40,000 square miles of former
German territory.
(HN, 12/7/98)
1970 Dec 13, Gen. Jaruzelski
imposed martial law.
(SFC, 5/16/01, p.D3)
1970 Dec 17, Riot police under
orders from defense minister Gen'l. Wojciech Jaruzelski opened fire on
workers protesting food price increases and 44 people were killed in
Gdansk, Gdynia, Szczecin, and Elblag. A case against Jaruzelski was
opened in 1996 and in 1999 a court ruled that medical reasons would not
exempt him from trial. The Jaruzelski trial began in 2001.
(SFC, 8/28/99, p.A14)(SFC, 5/16/01, p.D3)
1970 Dec 18, In Poland rioting
continued. Troops and tanks patrolled Polish streets. 20 people were
killed in the riots as they protested increased. food prices.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1970-12/1970-12-18-NBC-2.html)
1970 Jerzy Grotowsky (d.1999 at
65), theater director, published "Towards a Poor Theater."
(SFC, 1/16/99, p.A18)
1970-1976 In Poland a government informant known as
Bolek operated during this period. In 2008 2 historians alleged that
Lech Walesa was Bolek. Walesa denied the allegations.
(Econ, 6/28/08, p.58)
1973 Mar 5, Paul Kletzki (b.1900),
Polish violinist, composer, conductor, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kletzki)
1973 The Polish film "The
Hourglass Sanatorium" was directed by Wojciech Has and won top prize at
Cannes.
(SFC, 10/4/00, p.B2)
1973 In Poland scientists gathered
to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Copernicus. Cambridge physicist
Brandon Carter gave a lecture and coined the phrase "anthropomorphic
principle" to describe to describe the idea of an intelligent guide at
work in the evolution of humans. This is one item used by Patrick Glynn
in his 1997 book: "God: The Evidence" to support the idea of god with
scientific evidence.
(WSJ, 12/23/97, p.A12)
1974 May 18, World's tallest
structure, a 646-m Polish radio mast, was completed. It fell down Aug
8,1991.
(WSJ, 2/3/97,
p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_radio_mast)
1974 In Poland an explosion killed
34 miners at the Czechowice-Dziedzice in Silesia. This was the
country’s worst mining accident to date.
(AP, 11/22/06)
1974 The Polish film "Land of
Promise" was directed by Andrzej Wajda.
(SFC, 7/8/99, p.E3)
1975 Jul 29, President Ford became
the first U.S. president to visit the site of the Nazi concentration
camp Auschwitz in Poland as he paid tribute to the camp's victims.
(AP, 7/29/97)
1976 Jul 4,
Antoni Slonimski, Polish poet, translator, and newspaper columnist best
known for his devotion to pacifism and social justice, died in Warsaw.
(www.britannica.com)
1976 Jacek Kuron (1934-2004) led a
mobilization of the Committee to Assist Workers (KOR) to support
striking workers.
(SFC, 6/19/04, p.B6)
1978 Jul 5, A Soviet Soyuz
spacecraft touched down safely in Soviet Kazakhstan with its two-member
crew, including the first Polish space traveler -- Major Miroslaw
Hermaszewski.
(AP, 7/5/98)
1978 Oct 16, The College of
Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church chose Cardinal Wojtyla (58),
Archbishop of Cracow, to become Pope. He took the name John Paul II.
The first non-Italian since Adrian VI of Utrecht died in 1523.
(AP, 10/16/97)(HN, 10/16/98)
1979 Jun 2, Pope John Paul II,
formerly Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Warsaw, arrived in his native Poland
on the first visit by a pope to a Communist country. The Pope
celebrated a Mass at the Birkenau death camp during his visit.
(SFC, 11/20/96, p.C1)(SFEC, 6/1/97, p.D1)(AP,
6/2/97)(SFC, 5/29/99, p.A14)
1979 Oct 10, In Poland an
explosion killed 34 miners at the Dymitrow mine in Bytom. This matched
Poland’s worst mining accident in 1974.
(AP, 11/22/06)(http://tinyurl.com/2qgsmf)
1980 Aug 14, Some 17,000 Polish
workers, led by Lech Walesa, began a 17-day strike at the Lenin
Shipyards in Gdansk. This resulted in the creation of the Solidarity
labor movement.
(TMC, 1994, p.1980)(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A12)(AP, 8/14/00)
1980 Aug 31, Poland's Solidarity
labor movement was born with an agreement signed in Gdansk that ended a
17-day strike. The Communist government signed an agreement with the
Strike Coordination Committee in Gdansk, Poland, to allow legal
organization, but not actual free trade unions.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Enterprise_Strike_Committee)(AP,
8/31/97)
1980 Sep 22, Solidarity formally
was founded, when delegates of 36 regional trade unions met in Gdansk,
Poland, and united under the name Solidarnosc.
(www.britannica.com/nobelprize/article-9068595)
1980 Nov 22, Eighteen Communist
Party secretaries in 49 provinces were ousted in Poland. Edward Gierek
(d.2001 at 88), Communist boss, was among the ousted.
(HN, 11/22/98)(WSJ, 7/30/01, p.A1)
1980 Dec 14, After four days of
meetings, members of NATO warned the Soviets to stay out of the
internal affairs of Poland, saying that intervention would effectively
destroy the detente between East and West.
(HN, 12/14/98)
1980 Dec 14, A separate
agricultural union composed of private farmers, named Rural Solidarity
(Wiejska Solidarnosc), was founded in Warsaw.
(www.historyguide.org/europe/walesa.html)
1980 Zbigniev Rybczynski created
his experimental film "Tango," about a series of people in a crowded
apartment oblivious to each other's presence. It won an Academy Award
in 1983.
(WSJ, 10/29/03, p.D10)
1981 Jan 31, Lech Walesa announced
an accord in Poland, giving labor Saturdays off.
(HN, 1/31/99)
1981 Oct 18, In Poland General
Jaruzelski (b.1923) was elected party leader. He led the country to
1989.
(www.historyguide.org/europe/jaruzelski.html)(SFC,
10/24/96, p.C3)
1981 Nov, Col. Ryszard Kuklinski
fled Poland to the US. He had served as a US CIA spy and reported on
activities from 1972-1981. He passed some 35,000 pages of classified
Warsaw pack documents. In 2004 Benjamin Weiser authored "A Secret
Life," an account of Kuklinski's life as a spy.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A10)(WSJ, 2/3/04, p.A8)
1981 Dec 12-1982 Dec 31, In Poland
Gen’l. Jaruzelski imposed martial law, effective at midnight,
restricting civil rights and suspending operation of the independent
trade union Solidarity in a crackdown on the Solidarity labor movement.
Polish labor leader Lech Walesa was arrested. Martial law formally
ended in 1983. Women kept the organization going as most male leaders
were arrested. In 2005 Shana Penn authored “Solidarity’s Secret: The
Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland.
(Econ, 7/30/05,
p.76)(www.videofact.com/english/martial_law.htm)
1981 Dec 16, In Poland riot police
opened fire on protesting miners in Katowice. Nine were killed 25
wounded. A 4 year trial acquitted 22 riot police in 1997. In 2008 a
court upheld the conviction of 14 policemen involved in the killings.
(SFC,11/22/97, p.C2)(Econ, 6/28/08, p.58)
1981 Dec 22, Zdzislaw Rurarz
(1930-2007), Polish ambassador to Japan, defected to the US to protest
the imposition of martial law. Romuald Spasowski, the ambassador to the
United States, also defected.
(AP, 1/28/07)
1981 Dec 29, President Reagan
curtailed Soviet trade in reprisal for its harsh policy in Poland.
(HN, 12/29/00)
1981 The film “Image Before My
Eyes” was directed by Joshua Waletzky. It was based on the book by Dr.
Lucjan Dobroszycki. The documentary takes a broad look at the vibrant
Jewish community in Poland between the two World Wars.
(www.nga.gov/programs/filmart.shtm#film_list)
1981 The film "Man of Iron" was
made by Andrzej Wajda and won the Golden Palm award at Cannes. It was a
sequel to "Man of Marble" and was about the disillusionment of a father
and son under the Communist system.
(SFEC, 3/19/00, DB p.53)
1981 Kazimierz Brandys, author,
went into self-imposed exile in Paris following the crackdown on
Solidarity.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.D6)
1982 Jan 22, President Reagan
formally linked progress in arms control to Soviet repression in
Poland.
(HN, 1/22/99)
1982 Oct 8, All labor
organizations in Poland, including Solidarity, were banned.
(AP, 10/8/97)
1982 Oct 10, Pope John Paul II
canonized Rev. M. Kolbe (1894-1941), a Polish Franciscan friar. The
controversial racist priest had volunteered to die in place of another
inmate at Auschwitz concentration camp.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_Kolbe)
1982 Oct 10, US imposed sanctions
against Poland for banning Solidarity trade union.
(www.cnn.com/almanac/9810/10/)
1982 Nov 11, Solidarity leader
Lech Walesa (b.1943) was let out of jail in Poland.
(www.answers.com/topic/lech-walesa)
1982 Dec 31, In Poland Martial Law
was suspended. It was terminated on July 22, 1983.
(www.videofact.com/english/martial_law.htm)
1983 Apr 17, In Warsaw, police
routed 1,000 Solidarity supporters.
(HN, 4/17/98)
1983 May 14, In Warsaw, Poland,
Grzegorz Przemyk (19), student and son of Solidarity Grzegorz activist
Barbara Sadowska, died from internal injurious while in police
custody.
(http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/47-5-143.shtml)
1983 Jun 16, Pope John Paul II
visited Poland.
(www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/travels/sub_index1983/trav_polonia_en.htm)
1983 Jul 22, Polish government
ended 19 months of martial law. Some 100 government opponents lost
their lives in the 1½ year crackdown.
(SFC,11/22/97,
p.C2)(www.videofact.com/english/martial_law.htm)
1983 Oct 5, Lech Walesa, Polish
Solidarity founder, was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
(SFC, 10/12/96, p.A13)(AP, 10/5/08)
1983 James Michener wrote his
novel "Poland."
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A17)
1984 Oct 19, Jerzy Popieluszko,
Polish priest and dissident, was kidnapped and murdered. [see Oct 30,
Dec 27]
(www.wordiq.com/definition/Jerzy_Popieluszko)
1984 Oct 30, Police in Poland
found the body of kidnapped pro-Solidarity priest Father Jerzy
Popieluszko, whose death was blamed on four security officers.
(AP, 10/30/04)
1984 Dec 27, Four Polish officers
were tried for the slaying of Reverend Jerzy Popieluszko. [see Oct 19]
(HN, 12/27/98)
1985 Feb 13, Polish police
arrested 7 Solidarity leaders.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Solidarity)
1987 Feb 19, US Pres. Reagan
lifted remaining economic sanctions against Poland.
(www.eco.utexas.edu/~hmcleave/rieprop.html)
1987 May 9, All 183 people aboard
a Polish jetliner were killed when the plane, bound for New York,
crashed and burned in Warsaw after the pilot attempted an emergency
return.
(AP, 5/9/97)
1988 Aug 23, Some striking workers
in Poland ended a walkout that had begun a week earlier, but 125 miners
barricaded themselves in an underground shaft, vowing to stay until
they'd won their demands.
(AP, 8/23/98)
1988 The 10-part, 10-hour TV
series Decalogue by Krzystof Kieslowski described everyday events in
and around a Warsaw apartment complex.
(SFC, 4/23/99, p.C13)
1989 Feb 6, Lech Walesa began
negotiating with Polish government.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Round_Table_Agreement)
1989 Apr 5, The government of
Poland signed an agreement restoring the independent labor movement
Solidarity after a seven-year ban.
(AP, 4/5/99)
1989 Apr 17, Solidarity in Poland
was legalized.
(HFA, '96, p.28)
1989 Apr, The newspaper Gazeta
Wyborcza was created as part of a deal between the Solidarity movement
and Communists for free parliamentary elections. In 1999 Gazeta began
an IPO that valued its parent company, Agora SA, at $521 million.
(WSJ, 3/3/99, p.A16)
1989 Jun 4, Poland held Eastern
Europe's 1st somewhat free election in 40 years. The 2-part election
(June 4 and 19) resulted in a land-slide victory of the opposition
organized in the Citizens' Committee, which won all 161 seats available
to it in the Sejm, and 99 out of 100 seats in the senate.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_Citizens'_Committee)
1989 Jun 30, General Wojciech
Jaruzelski announced he would not run for Poland's new presidency,
saying the people viewed him as the man who imposed martial law.
(AP, 6/29/99)
1989 Jul 9, President Bush began a
visit to Poland.
(AP, 7/9/99)
1989 Jul 29, Poland's newly
elected president, Wojciech Jaruzelski, resigned as Communist Party
general secretary and was succeeded by Mieczyslaw Rakowski (1927-2008).
Rakowski, a historian and journalist, remained chairman of the
communist Polish United Workers' Party until the party was dissolved at
its January 1990 congress during the country's bloodless transition to
democracy.
(AP, 7/29/99)(AP, 11/8/08)
1989 Aug 10, Poland's Roman
Catholic church suspended an agreement to move nuns from a convent on
the edge of Auschwitz, blaming Jewish groups for creating what it
called an "atmosphere of aggressive demands."
(AP, 8/10/99)
1989 Aug 11, Poland's
Solidarity-dominated Senate adopted a resolution expressing sorrow for
the nation's participation in the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of
Czechoslovakia.
(AP, 8/11/99)
1989 Aug 19, Polish President
Wojciech Jaruzelski formally nominated Tadeusz Mazowiecki to become
Poland's first non-Communist prime minister in four decades.
(AP, 8/19/99)
1989 Aug 24, Poland appointed
Tadeusz Mazowiecki prime minister, becoming the first country in the
Soviet bloc to name a non-communist prime minister since the late 1940s.
(Reuters, 8/24/01)
1989 Sep 19, The trade and
commercial and economic cooperation agreement between the Community and
Poland signed in Warsaw, Poland.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1989/index_en.htm)
1989 Nov 13, Polish labor leader
Lech Walesa received the Medal of Freedom from President Bush during a
White House ceremony.
(AP, 11/13/99)
1990 Apr 13, The Soviet Union
accepted responsibility for the World War II murders of thousands of
imprisoned Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, a massacre the Soviets
had previously blamed on the Nazis.
(AP, 4/13/97)
1990 Jul 17, The seven nations
negotiating German unification reached agreement in Paris on Poland’s
permanent border, clearing the way for the merger of East and West
Germany.
(AP, 7/17/00)
1990 Nov 4, Douglas Wakiihuri of
Kenya and Wanda Panfil of Poland won the New York City Marathon.
(AP, 11/4/00)
1990 Nov 25, Poland held its first
popular presidential election. Solidarity founder Lech Walesa, who
received a plurality of votes, won a runoff the following month.
(AP, 11/25/00)
1990 Dec 9, Lech Walesa, founder
of Solidarity, was elected president of Poland in a runoff by a
landslide.
(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A12)(HN, 12/999)(AP, 12/9/00)
1990 Dec 22, Lech Walesa took the
oath of office as Poland's first popularly elected president.
(AP, 12/22/97)
1991 Mar 20, Pres. Bush announced
the US would reduce Poland’s indebtedness by a full 70%. The Paris
Club, an informal grouping of the world's 17 leading industrial
countries, announced a week earlier that it would halve Poland's
enormous debt and reduce accumulated interest by 80 percent. The US
portion of the forgiven debt was approximately $2.4 billion.
(http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/erc/briefing/dispatch/1991/html/Dispatchv2no12.html)
1991 Apr 1, The Warsaw Pact was
officially dissolved.
(OTD)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact)
1991 Aug 8, The 2,120-foot 8-inch
Radio One tower in Poland fell down.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_radio_mast)
1991 Dec 16, "Europe Agreements"
are signed with Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1991/index_en.htm)
1991 Tough environmental laws were
laid down and set to take effect in 1997.
(WSJ, 4/5/96, p.B-3A)
1991 Agnieszka Kotlarska became
Miss Poland. She was murdered in 1996.
(SFC, 8/29/96, p.A14)
1991 In Visegrad, Hungary, a
declaration of co-operation was signed by Poland, Hungary, the Czech
Republic and Slovakia. The 4 became known as the Visegrad countries.
(Econ, 11/22/03, p.10S)
1992 Mar 5, In Copenhagen the
Ministers for Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany,
Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia and Sweden, in the presence
of the representative from the European Commission, opened a 2-day
meeting and decided to establish a Council of the Baltic Sea States to
serve as a forum for guidance and overall coordination among the
participating states. Iceland joined the CBSS in 1995
(Econ, 6/7/08,
p.63)(www.bmwi.de/English/Navigation/European-policy/baltic-market.html)
1992 Jun 29, The remains of Polish
statesman Ignace Jan Paderewski, interred for five decades in the
United States, were returned to his homeland in keeping with his wish
to be buried only in a free Poland.
(AP, 6/28/02)
1992 Jul 5, Leaders of the world's
seven richest nations gathered in Munich, Germany, for their 18th
annual economic summit. President Bush, en route to the summit, told
cheering Poles in Warsaw that "America shares Poland's dream."
(AP, 7/5/97)
1992 The Polish left-wing populist
party Samoobrona (Self-defense) was founded as a small farmer’s
movement.
(Econ, 5/8/04, p.47)
1993 Jul 19, Szymon Goldberg (84),
Polish-born violinist, conductor, died in Japan. He became a US citizen
in 1953 and two years later founded the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra.
(http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200152693/default.html)
1993 Sep 19, Polish voters turned
left in parliamentary elections, giving the most number of seats to the
Democratic Left Alliance.
(AP, 9/19/98)
1994 Mar 18, Lithuania and
Poland signed an agreement in Warsaw on friendship and neighborly
cooperation.
(LHC, 3/18/03)
1994 Jul 7, President Clinton,
visiting Poland, assured the parliament that the U.S. would "not let
the Iron Curtain be replaced by a veil of indifference."
(AP, 7/7/99)
1994 The film "Red" by Polish
director Krzysztof Kieslowski was inspired by the poem Love At First
Sight by Wislawa Szymborska. It was the 3rd in his trilogy that
included "Blue" and "White."
(SFC, 10/4/96, p.A17)(SFEC, 1/9/00, BR p.2)
1995 Mar 1, Jozef Oleksy succeeded
Waldemar Pawlak as premier of Poland.
(http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Waldemar+Pawlak)
1995 Nov 19, Former Communist
Alexander Kwasniewski won the presidency by a narrow margin over Pres.
Walesa with 51.7% of the vote.
(WSJ, 11/7/95, p.A-1)(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-1)
1995 Dec, The European Investment
Bank signed a loan for $127.4 to provide financing for
small and midsize Polish firms.
(WSJ, 12/11/95, p.B3B)
1995 The Violin Concerto No. 2 by
Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki was written for the German
violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and premiered in Leipzig with the Central
German Radio orchestra.
(SFC, 11/9/96, p.E1)
1996 Jan. Prime Minister Jozef
Oleksy was charged with providing state secrets to a foreign power and
consorting with Soviet and Russian spies.
(WSJ, 1/22/96, p.A-12)
1996 Jan 25, The Prime Minister
resigned.
(WSJ, 1/25/96, A-1)
1996 Jan 31, Wlodzimierz
Cimoszewicz was named as candidate for prime minister.
(WSJ, 2/1/96, p.A-1)
1996 Apr 12, Poland’s government
agreed to grant pensions to former presidents Lech Walesa, Wojciech
Jaruzelski, and the last pre-Communist pres. Ryszard Kaszorowski. The
net pension will be about $1600 a month. Legislators later approved
$800 per month.
(SFC, 4/13/96, p.A-9)(WSJ, 5/31/96, p.A1)
1996 Jul 7, The average cost of a
Big Mac in Poland was $1.44.
(SFC, 7/7/96, Parade, p.17)
1996 Jul 20, At the Atlanta
Olympics, Renata Mauer of Poland won the Games' first gold, in the
10-meter air rifle.
(AP, 7/20/97)
1996 Aug 28, Agnieszka Kotlarska,
fashion model, was knifed and killed by a thief outside her home.
(SFC, 8/29/96, p.A14)
1996 Sep, Michael Jackson, pop
singer, played the Warsaw leg of his "HIStory" tour.
(SFEC, 3/22/98, p.A18)
1996 Oct 6, At the Tokyo Int’l.
film festival a special jury prize went to the Polish film "In Full
Gallop" by Krzysztof Zanussi.
(SFEC, 10/7/96, D3)
1996 Oct 24, Polish lawmakers
relaxed the controversial abortion law and allowed women to terminate
pregnancies until the 12th week for financial or emotional reasons. The
law was signed on Nov 20.
(SFC, 10/25/96, p.A15)(SFC, 11/21/96, p.C6)
1996 Nov 11, Poland’s return to
independence after WW I was celebrated and hundreds of skinheads and
right-wing activists staged demonstrations against Jews and foreigners.
(SFC, 11/13/96, p.C2)
1997 Jan 1, Tough environmental
laws that were set in 1991 were scheduled to take effect.
(WSJ, 4/5/96, p.B-3A)
1997 May 13, The pension crises in
Poland was described. One-fifth of the GDP was being used for pensions
and the state social security office, ZUS, was feared to be facing
bankruptcy without quick reforms.
(SFC, 5/13/97, p.A13)
1997 May 25, Poland adopted a new
constitution to replace the 1952 communist-era charter. It was
committed a market economy, private ownership, personal freedoms and
civilian control of the military.
(SFC, 5/26/97, p.A10)
1997 May 28, A Constitutional
Tribunal struck down the new abortion law. Parliament was given 6
months consider the ruling.
(SFC, 5/29/97, p.A12)
1997 May, Michael Jackson, pop
star, returned to Poland and signed a letter of intent to build a $500
million World of Childhood amusement park under the direction of US
entrepreneur Jacques Tourel.
(SFEC, 3/22/98, p.A18)
1997 Jun 10, Pope John Paul II
bade farewell to his native Poland as he ended an 11-day pilgrimage.
(AP, 6/10/98)
1997 Jul 8, NATO issued formal
invitations to Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
(SFC, 7/9/97, p.A1)
1997 Jul 10, Torrential rains in
Poland and the Czech Republic killed at least 39 people and forced
thousands from their homes.
(SFC, 7/11/97, p.A11)
1997 Jul 13, In Poland floods
threatened the isle of Ostrow Tumski on the Oder River in the heart of
Wroclaw, whose buildings date back to the 13th century. A 100-year
flood swept through the Sudety Mountains.
(SFC, 7/14/97, p.A15)(SFEC, 8/2/98, p.T8)
1997 Sep 21, Election results
indicated that Solidarity won 189 of the 460 seats of the parliament
with about 34% of the vote.
(WSJ, 9/23/97, p.A1)
1997 Sep, Col. Ryszard Kuklinski
was cleared of spy charges after a military court ruled that he acted
in Poland’s best interests. He had served as a US CIA spy and reported
on activities from 1972-1981. He passed some 35,000 pages of classified
Warsaw pack documents.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A10)
1997 Oct 31, Jerzy Buzek (57), a
chemical engineering professor, became PM of Poland and served until
Oct 19, 2001.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Buzek)
1997 Dec 3, Cardinal Jozef Glemp
chastised Rev. Tadeusz Rydzyk for his daily broadcasts of hate and rage
mingled with prayer sessions. Rydzyk began broadcasting over Radio
Maryja in 1991 and has become the 4th most popular station in Poland
with 5 million listeners, mostly among older, religious observant women.
(SFEC,12/14/97, p.A22)
1997 Krzystof Kieslowski, film
director, died. In 2000 Annette Insdorf authored "Double Lives Second
Chances: The Cinema of Krzystof Kieslowski."
(SFEC, 1/9/00, BR p.2)
1998 Mar 21, Maciej Slomczynski,
translator, died at age 77. He made Polish translation of Shakespeare’s
complete works, Joyce’s "Ulysses" and works by Faulkner, Swift and
Milton.
(SFC, 3/24/98, p.B2)
1998 Apr 3, Some 15,000 leftist
trade unionists protested for reforms in Warsaw. Prime Minister Jerzy
Buzek recently proposed to merge Poland’s 49 provinces into 12 regions.
(SFC, 4/4/98, p.A16)
1998 Apr 27, Col. Ryszard
Kuklinski returned to Poland from the US. He had served as a US CIA spy
and reported on activities from 1972-1981. He was cleared of charges in
1997.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A10)
1998 Jun 25, Marek Papala (38),
former national police chief, was killed in Warsaw as he stepped out of
his car outside his home. He was scheduled to be liaison officer to the
EU with efforts directed at organized crime. Some 300-400 organized
gangs were operating in Poland. Polish officials accused Edward Mazur,
who holds Polish and US citizenship, of enticing another man to shoot
Papala for $40,000. Mazur faced murder charges in Poland in the
shooting death of Papala. In 2006 Mazur remained in the US federal
government's Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago pending an
extradition hearing.
(SFC, 6/27/98, p.A14)(AP, 11/28/06)
1998 Jul 22, Flash floods caused
heavy damage along the Duszniki River.
(SFEC, 8/2/98, p.T8)
1998 Jul 28, Zbigniev Herbert
(b.1924), poet and essayist, died at age 73 in Warsaw. He insisted that
civilization depended on artists’ staking out clear moral
positions resistant to the winds of history and ideology. In 1999
John and Bogdana Carpenter translated "Elegy for the Departure and
Other Poems," and "The King of the Ants: Mythological Essays."
(SFC, 7/30/98, p.B2)(SFEC, 3/28/99, BR p.8)
1998 Summer, Authorities closed a
bridge for repair at Gora Kalwaria and created a traffic jam that
spread across the country. There were only 160 miles of highway in all
of Poland.
(SFC, 12/19/98, p.B3)
1998 Nov 23, An Arctic cold wave
was reported to have killed 71 people across Europe over the last 3
days. 36 deaths were in Poland and 24 in Romania and Bulgaria.
(SFC, 11/24/98, p.A14)
1998 Nov 25, In Poland the cold
weather left another 8 people dead, mostly middle-aged drinkers who
died outside.
(SFC, 11/26/98, p.B5)
1998 Dec 18, In Poland Pres.
Kwasniewski signed a bill that would allow victims of communist-era
repression to see their secret police files.
(SFC, 12/19/98, p.B3)
1998 A "vetting law’ was passed
that required politicians to file declarations of whether they ever
cooperated with the secret police.
(SFC, 8/12/00, p.A10)
1999 Mar 12, Poland, Hungary and
the Czech Republic formally joined NATO in a ceremony at Independence,
Mo., where Pres. Truman announced in 1949 the formation of the Atlantic
alliance for defense against the Soviet bloc.
(SFC, 3/11/99, p.C14)
1999 Apr 10, Poland welcomed the
first of several thousand ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo.
(SFEC, 4/11/99, p.A30)
1999 May 10, Pres. Kwasniewski
signed a bill authorizing the removal of crosses erected by Catholics
near the site of Auschwitz.
(WSJ, 5/11/99, p.A1)
1999 Jun 4, Pope John Paul II
traveled to Poland, the first stop on a 13-day visit to 20 cities. This
was his 8th visit to Poland.
(WSJ, 6/4/99, p.A1)
1999 Aug 6, The 5th free Station
Woodstock rock festival was held in Zary with an estimated 200,000
people in attendance.
(SFEC, 8/8/99, p.A22)
1999 The Polish film "Battu's
Bioscope" was by Andrzej Fidyk. It was a documentary about a Bengali
showman bringing films to rural villagers, while longing for his
kidnapped wife.
(SFEC, 4/11/99, DB p.36)
1999 The Polish film "Mr. Tadeusz"
was directed by Andrzej Wajda. It was based on the Romantic verse novel
by Adam Mickiewicz.
(SFC, 7/8/99, p.E3)
1999 The Polish film "With Fire
and Sword" was directed by Jerzy Hoffman. It was based on a novel set
during the 17th century war between Poland and the Ukraine.
(SFC, 7/8/99, p.E3)
1999 Agora SA, the parent company
of Gazeta Wyborcza, went public. Its 1600 employees received shares at
one zloty each (23 cents). The Gazeta IPO valued its parent company,
Agora SA, at $521 million.
(WSJ, 3/3/99, p.A16)(WSJ, 7/13/00, p.A1)
2000 Jan 20, Poland expelled 9
Russian diplomats under allegations of spying.
(WSJ, 1/21/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 11, Kazimierz Brandys,
émigré Polish author, died in Paris at age 83.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.D6)
2000 Apr 12, the Polish Central
Bank allowed the zloty to float.
(WSJ, 4/12/00, p.A18)
2000 May 28, In Poland the Freedom
Union Party voted to resign from the coalition government of Prime
Minister Jerzy Buzek.
(SFC, 5/29/00, p.A10)
2000 Jun 25, In Warsaw a 3-day
world Forum on Democracy was sponsored by the NY-based Freedom House
and the Warsaw-based Stefan Batory Foundation.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, p.A9)
2000 Jun 26, In Warsaw a 2-day
ministerial-level conference, "Toward a Community of Democracies," was
the 1st of a planned biannual series.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, p.A9)
2000 Jun 27, In Poland 107
participants joined to endorse a declaration of the "community of
democracies." France alone excluded itself.
(SFC, 6/28/00, p.B10)
2000 Sep 15, Truckers across
Europe blocked highways to protest high fuel costs. Protests hit Spain,
Germany, Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic.
(SFC, 9/16/00, p.A10)
2000 Oct 8, In Poland Pres.
Aleksander Kwasniewski won a second five-year term in national
elections with 55% of the vote.
(SFC, 10/9/00, p.A10)(AP, 10/8/01)
2000 Dec 10, Fishermen dragged the
corpse of Dariusz Janiszewski, stripped to a shirt and underwear, from
the muddy banks of the Oder River in southwestern Poland. His body
showed signs of starvation and torture. In 2007 a court ruled that
author Krystian Bala planned and directed the grisly killing, but said
there was insufficient evidence to convict him of carrying out the
murder himself. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Bala's 2003
novel, "Amok," an alcohol- and sex-fueled tale was narrated by a man
named Chris, who stabs a woman after binding her hands behind her back
and then running the rope to a noose around her neck.
(AP, 9/5/07)
2000 A new Motorola plant for chip
production and software development was to be built. The investment was
valued at $110 mil by 2001. The software center was to be established
with Krakow’s Jagiellonian Univ. and was expected to employ 500
engineers and scientists within a few years.
(WSJ, 3/30/98, p.A12)
2001 May 17, The 2 defense
attorneys in the trial of Gen. Jaruzelski quit.
(SFC, 5/18/01, p.D4)
2001 Jul 10, In Jedwabne Pres.
Kwasniewski apologized for a wartime massacre of Jews.
(SFC, 7/11/01, p.A7)
2001 Jul 29, Edward Gierek, the
Polish communist ruler who pushed for reform during the 1970s but was
forced from power in 1980 over mounting debt and strikes, died at 88.
(AP, 7/29/02)
2001 Sep 23, Elections were held
in Poland and the Democratic Left Alliance, composed of former
Communists, won with 41% of the popular vote. Leszek Miller became the
new PM.
(SFC, 9/24/01, p.B1)(Econ, 2/19/05, p.49)
2001 Sep 23, Henryk Tomaszewski
(81), theater artist, died. His dreamlike, wordless presentations
influenced some American avant-garde artists.
(SFC, 10/24/01, p.C6)
2001 Nov 4, It was reported that
both Poland and the Czech Republic would send military forces to assist
the US in Afghanistan.
(WSJ, 11/5/01, p.A17)
2001 Nov 6, Pres. Bush met with
France’s Pres. Chirac and addressed an anti-terrorism meeting in Poland
via satellite.
(SFC, 11/7/01, p.A1)
2001 Parliament approved a law to
compensate Polish citizens whose property was seized under Communist
rule from 1944-1962, but only for those who retained Polish citizenship
on Dec 31, 1999.
(SFC, 1/12/01, p.A18)(WSJ, 1/12/00, p.A1)
2001 Pernod Ricard SA acquired the
Polish vodka Wyborova, Czech bitters Jan Becher and Seagram’s Martell
cognac and Chivas scotch.
(WSJ, 9/7/05, p.B2)
2002 Mar 28, Pope John Paul II
accepted the resignation of Julius Paetz, archbishop of Poznan, Poland,
due to a sex scandal and accusations of molesting young seminarians.
(SFC, 3/29/02, p.A7)
2002 Jul 14, A bus with 52
passengers, mostly Polish students, crashed in western Romania, killing
five people and injuring 26.
(AP, 7/14/02)
2002 Aug 16, Pope John Paul II
returned to Poland for a 3-day visit.
(SFC, 8/17/02, p.A10)
2002 Aug 19, An ailing and aging
John Paul II bid a tearful farewell to his homeland as he concluded a
four-day visit to the Krakow region of Poland.
(AP, 8/19/03)
2002 Oct 9, The European Union's
executive Commission declared Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus,
Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovenia,
and Slovakia nearly ready for EU membership and recommended they be
invited to join in 2004. Romania and Bulgaria likely will be delayed
until 2007 because of weak economies, the Commission said, adding
Turkey was the weakest link among candidates.
(AP, 10/9/02)
2002 Oct 27, Polish voters chose
mayors directly for the first time since the end of communism in local
elections seen as a tests of popularity for the year-old national
government.
(AP, 10/27/02)
2002 Nov 27, Daniel Baraniuk (27)
from Gdansk, Poland, set a new pole-sitting world record, coming down
from his perch in a German fun park after 196 days and nights.
(AP, 11/27/02)
2002 Dec 13, The EU reached
agreement to accept 10 new countries in 2004. These included Czech
Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland,
Slovakia, and Slovenia.
(SFC, 12/14/02, p.A3)
2002 Dec 27, Poland
announced it will buy 48 U.S.-made F-16 jet fighters from Lockheed
Martin for $3.5 billion to upgrade its air force to NATO standards
(AP, 12/27/02)
2003 Jan 17, Poland Prime Minister
Leszek Miller fired his health minister and 2 deputy finance ministers
resigned in the 2nd Cabinet reshuffle this month.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Mar 1, In Poland the
year-old left-leaning government under PM Leszek Miller collapsed after
an emergency meeting between coalition partners broke down in a bitter
dispute sparked by a new tax plan.
(AP, 3/1/03)(SSFC, 3/2/03, A7)
2003 Apr 2, Polish troops fighting
with the US-led coalition in Iraq reported encountering many Iraqi
combatants in civilian clothes.
(AP, 4/2/03)
2003 Apr 18, Poland signed a deal
to buy 48 US-made F-16 jet fighters for $3.5 billion, the biggest
defense contract by a former Soviet bloc country since the end of the
Cold War.
(AP, 4/18/03)
2003 May 21, NATO's 19 nations
agreed unanimously to start planning to help Poland lead a
multinational peacekeeping force in Iraq.
(AP, 5/21/03)
2003 May 30, President Bush began
a 6-nation tour in Krakow, Poland, and brought personal thanks to the
country for standing up as a wartime ally in Iraq.
(AP, 5/30/03)(SFC, 5/31/03, p.A14)
2003 Jun 8, Poland ended a two-day
referendum to join the EU. 76% of the 59.6% turnout voted in favor.
(AP, 6/9/03)(SFC, 6/9/03, p.A7)
2003 Jun 11, Poland's finance
minister quit in a power struggle over economic reforms. Grzegorz
Kolodko was the 11th minister, and the second finance minister, to quit
Miller's 20-month-old left-leaning administration.
(AP, 6/11/03)
2003 Nov 6, Two American soldiers
were killed near Baghdad and along the Syrian border. Polish forces
suffered their first combat death when a Polish major was fatally
wounded in an ambush south of the capital.
(AP, 11/6/03)
2003 Dec 22, Poland's Pres.
Aleksander Kwasniewski made an unannounced visit to the headquarters of
Polish-led peacekeepers in Iraq.
(AP, 12/22/03)
2003 Dec 29, Poland and Israel
signed a deal worth some $350 million over the next 10 years to provide
the Polish army with some 2,700 state-of-the-art Israeli anti-tank
missiles.
(AP, 12/29/03)
2003 In NYC the Grammercy Theater
featured "A Short History of Polish Animation" and "A Short History of
Polish Avant-Garde and Experimental Film."
(WSJ, 10/29/03, p.D10)
2004 Jan, Sergiusz Kozubek (26),
creator of a website for the town of Koniakow, Poland,
(www.koniakow.com), began offering locally produced lace thongs, named
stringi, on the site. Women of this Silesian highlands town had
produced lace articles for the last 2 centuries.
(WSJ, 6/2/04, p.B2B)
2004 Mar 26, Polish PM Leszek
Miller announced he will step down the day after Poland joins the
European Union on May 1, taking the blame for his government's collapse
in popularity and raising the prospect of early elections. 22 members
of Miller’s SLD party had left to form the new left-wing Polish social
Democracy as Miller’s popularity plummeted.
(AP, 3/26/04)(Econ, 4/3/04, p.56)
2004 Apr 27, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov and EU officials signed an accord extending the
EU-Russia partnership accord to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,
Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta,
which join May 1.
(AP, 4/27/04)
2004 May 1, Revelers across
ex-communist eastern Europe celebrated their historic entry to the
European Union. 10 new members (Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia,
Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia)
joined. Malta joined with 70 exemptions to EU rules. Poland had 43
exemptions. Latvia had 32. The Turkish occupied area of Cyprus was
suspended from entry.
(AP, 5/1/04)(Econ, 2/28/04, p.50)(Econ, 4/16/05,
p.16)
2004 May 2, Poland's PM Leszek
Miller stepped down after helping lead Poland into the European Union.
New PM Marek Belka promised to push ahead with tough reforms and keep
supporting the United States in Iraq as he took the helm, a day after
Poland joined the European Union.
(AP, 5/2/04)
2004 May 7, In Iraq gunmen
ambushed a Polish TV crew south of Baghdad, killing a producer and a
correspondent who was Poland's best-known war reporter.
(AP, 5/7/04)
2004 May 9, Polish police in Lodz
mistakenly opened fire with live ammunition to stop a street fight,
killing a 19-year-old man and wounding three others.
(AP, 5/9/04)
2004 May 14, Poland's new PM Marek
Belka, who had urged patience for free-market reforms and his country's
mission in Iraq, lost a parliamentary confidence vote.
(AP, 5/14/04)
2004 Jun 11, Poland's president
nominated economist Marek Belka as prime minister for the 2nd time,
opening the way for lawmakers to confirm a new government or trigger
early elections by rejecting it.
(AP, 6/11/04)
2004 Jul 31, In Poland some
200,000 people gathered for the 10th annual weekend concert called
Woodstock in Kostrzyn.
(AP, 7/31/04)
2004 Aug 14, Czeslaw Milosz (93),
Polish poet and Nobel laureate (1980), died in Krakow. He was known for
his intellectual and emotional works about some of the worst cruelties
of the 20th century. Milosz was born on June 30, 1911, in Szetejnie,
now Lithuania, and studied law at the University in Vilnius. There, he
published his first book of poems, "Three Winters," in 1936. In 2006
Cynthia L. Haven edited the book “Czeslaw Milosz: Conversations.”
(AP, 8/14/04)(Econ, 8/21/04, p.72)(SSFC, 9/24/06,
p.M5)
2004 Aug, The supervisory board of
PKN Orlen, Poland’s largest oil company, dumped pres. Jacek
Walszykowski. The government, which owned 27.5% of PKN, wanted him out
because of his ties with Jan Kulczyk, the country’s richest businessman
and owner of 4.8% of PKN.
(Econ, 11/6/04, p.64)
2004 Sep 12, Three Polish soldiers
were killed in Iraq when they were attacked with grenades and
machine-gun fire as they returned to their base from a demining
operation.
(AP, 9/12/04)
2004 Oct 7, In Poland organizers
of the 5th annual erotic fair in Warsaw said they would defy an order
from the mayor's office and go ahead and stage a "test" for the woman
who can carry out a sex act with as many men as possible.
(AP, 10/8/04)
2004 Nov 13, Australian police
arrested two men and seized three million ecstasy tablets that the pair
is accused of importing from Poland hidden inside a bakery oven.
(AP, 11/13/04)
2004 Nov 20, A Polish woman
abducted from her apartment in Baghdad reappeared in Poland after being
suddenly released.
(AP, 11/20/04)
2004 Dec 22, Poland's PM Marek
Belka and Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski arrived in Iraq for a
Christmas visit to Polish troops.
(AP, 12/22/04)
2004 French retailer Carrefour SA
agreed to buy 13 supermarkets in Poland.
(WSJ, 4/15/08, p.B2)
2005 Jan 1, Poland was forecast
for 4.5% annual GDP growth with a population at 38.1 million and GDP
per head at $7,300.
(Econ, 1/8/05, p.89)
2005 Jan 4, Polish PM Marek Belka
arrived in Tripoli for a two-day visit that will include talks on
cooperation in the oil sector and a meeting with Libyan leader Moamer
Kadhafi.
(AFP, 1/5/05)
2005 Jan 13, In Poland an
anti-terrorism law that allows authorities to shoot down hijacked
planes as a last resort took effect, part of efforts to protect the
country from attacks similar to those of Sept. 11.
(AP, 1/13/05)
2005 Jan 19, The Polish government
signed a deal with US defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. paving
the way for the transfer of technology and investment to a Polish
weapons producer.
(AP, 1/19/05)
2005 Feb 22, Zdzislaw Beksinski, a
surrealist painter who was one of Poland's leading contemporary
artists, was found stabbed to death at his Warsaw home.
(AP, 2/22/05)\
2005 May 23, Ryszard Kalisz,
Poland's interior minister, offered his resignation amid reports of
growing corruption in police forces around the country.
(AP, 5/23/05)
2005 Jun 1, In Poland
investigators published a report offering new details of allegations
that a priest was an informer for Poland's communist government while
he was close to Pope John Paul II's entourage in the 1980s. The report
says against Rev. Konrad Stanislaw Hejmo met secretly with communist
agents from 1975 to 1988 in upscale restaurants and hotel rooms, giving
them details about the church in return for money and gifts of liquor.
(AP, 6/1/05)
2005 Jun 11, More than 2,000
people defied a ban on a gay-rights rally in Poland's capital, taking
to the streets of Warsaw against the orders of the city's conservative
mayor.
(AP, 6/11/05)
2005 Jun 15, Poland said it will
cut its 1,700-troop deployment to Iraq this summer by as many as 300
troops.
(AP, 6/15/05)
2005 Jun 29, Poles lined up to buy
collectors' coins with the image of the late Pope John Paul II, issued
by the central bank to honor Poland's most famous son.
(AP, 6/29/05)
2005 Aug 2, Belarusian police
arrested two leaders of an ethnic Polish cultural group after seizing
the group's headquarters, raising already heightened tensions between
the neighboring countries.
(AP, 8/2/05)
2005 Aug 10, An assailant beat a
Polish envoy near Poland's Moscow embassy, drawing diplomatic protests
over the second such attack in four days.
(AP, 8/11/05)
2005 Aug 17, Norwegian officials
said 3 unarmed Polish researchers stranded on a remote Arctic island
were rescued by helicopter as polar bears were closing in on them. The
escape took place on an island in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, about
650 miles from the North Pole.
(AP, 8/17/05)
2005 Aug 27, Stanislaw Dziwisz
(66), Pope John Paul II's longtime aide, was installed as archbishop of
Krakow.
(AP, 8/27/05)
2005 Sep 25, Polish voters cast
their ballots in a parliamentary election expected to deal a crushing
defeat to an ex-communist government plagued by scandal and high
unemployment and lead to a coalition government between two
conservative parties. Voters embraced two center-right parties that
have promised tax cuts and clean government.
(AP, 9/25/05)(AP, 9/26/05)
2005 Sep 27, The leader of
Poland's Law and Justice party (PiS) said he would begin talks to form
a new center-right coalition government after the final count confirmed
its election victory. PiS won by promising to uproot the uklad, a
network of ex-spies, corrupt businessmen and political insiders, who
have dominated Poland since 1989.
(AP, 9/27/05)(Econ, 9/29/07, p.54)
2005 Sep 30, A bus carrying high
school students on a pilgrimage to Czestochowa, a 14th century
monastery and Poland's most sacred Roman Catholic shrine, collided with
a truck and burst into flames, killing 12 people.
(AP, 9/30/05)
2005 Oct 9, In Poland voters chose
between two former Solidarity movement activists in presidential
elections, underlining the decline of the former communists in a
country that was part of the Soviet bloc only 16 years ago.
(AP, 10/9/05)
2005 Oct 10, The final count in
Poland's presidential election confirmed that the pro-market lawmaker
Donald Tusk won more votes than conservative Warsaw Mayor Lech
Kaczynski, but fell short of a majority needed for an outright victory
in a first round of balloting.
(AP, 10/10/05)
2005 Oct 11-2005 Oct 12, Polish
customs officials seized at least 8 million cigarettes apparently
destined for the British market in a coordinated sweep in two cities.
The cigarettes, mostly low-quality Ukrainian-made, were to be
incinerated.
(AP, 10/12/05)
2005 Oct 16, Polish television
broadcast a recorded interview with Pope Benedict XVI, who said that he
planned to visit Poland, the homeland of his predecessor, John Paul II
(it's believed to be the first TV interview by a pope).
(AP, 10/16/06)
2005 Oct 19, Polish President
Aleksander Kwasniewski nominated conservative Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz
as PM following the first meeting of the newly elected parliament.
(AP, 10/19/05)
2005 Oct 23, Poles voted for a new
president in an election that opinion polls showed to be a close-fought
battle between Donald Tusk and his vision of a liberal, free-market
Poland, and Lech Kaczynski who favors state intervention and Catholic
conservatism. Warsaw's conservative Mayor Lech Kaczynski won Poland's
presidential runoff vote 54%-46%.
(AP, 10/23/05)(Econ, 10/29/05, p.52)
2005 Oct 31, Polish President
Aleksander Kwasniewski has officially named a minority conservative
government headed by Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz.
(AP, 10/31/05)
2005 Nov 3, European Union
officials said they would investigate a report that the CIA set up
secret jails in Eastern Europe to interrogate top al-Qaida suspects.
The international Red Cross also said it asked the US to let a
representative visit detainees if such a facility exists. At least 10
nations denied that the prisons were in their territory. Human Rights
Watch in New York said it has evidence indicating the CIA transported
suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania.
(AP, 11/3/05)
2005 Nov 17, Greenpeace activists
in small inflatable boats stopped a ship carrying genetically
engineered soybean meal from unloading in a Polish port. Greenpeace
says genetically engineered soy is causing massive environmental
problems in Argentina, including deforestation, a dramatic increase in
the use of toxic herbicides and soil infertility.
(AP, 11/17/05)
2005 Nov 23, Poland's two leading
newspapers blacked out large sections of their front pages in an
eye-catching protest against media repression in neighboring Belarus.
(AP, 11/23/05)
2005 Nov 25, Poland's defense
minister signed an order that will give researchers access to most of
the Warsaw Pact's top-secret archives, including decisions related to
the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.
(AP, 11/25/05)
2005 Dec 9, Marc Garlasco, a Human
Rights Watch investigator, said Poland served as the CIA's main center
to detain terrorist suspects in Europe at clandestine prisons.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 10, Poland's PM
Marcinkiewicz said that he has ordered a probe of allegations that the
CIA ran secret prisons for terror suspects on Polish territory.
(AP, 12/10/05)
2005 Dec 23, Lech Kaczynski was
sworn in as Poland's new president, completing the rise to power of
conservative leaders who pledged to fight corruption, boost the economy
and distance the country from its communist past.
(AP, 12/23/05)
2005 Dec 27, Ukraine and Bulgaria
said all their troops had left Iraq. Poland said it would remain but
reduce its number of troops by 600 next year.
(AP, 12/27/05)
2006 Jan 1, Russia's natural gas
monopoly halted sales to Ukraine in a price dispute and began reducing
pressure in transmission lines that also carry substantial supplies to
western Europe. Supplies of natural gas to Poland have been hit by cuts
imposed by Russia on the amount of gas entering the pipeline system in
neighbouring Ukraine.
(Reuters, 1/1/06)(AFP, 1/1/06)
2006 Jan 28, In southern Poland an
exhibition hall collapsed during a racing pigeon show in Katowice,
killing at least 65 people and injuring 160. On June 26 three men, who
helped design the exhibition hall, were arrested on suspicion of
endangering lives by failing to meet building codes.
(AP, 1/31/06)(SFC, 2/1/06, p.A3)(AP, 6/26/06)
2006 Feb 16, A human rights group
said that homophobic rhetoric has escalated in Poland since a socially
conservative party came to power, threatening the rights of gays and
lesbians.
(AP, 2/16/06)
2006 Feb 24, Polish TV reported
that police had arrested about 30 people in several countries across
Europe in a sting operation against a suspected child-porn ring.
(Reuters, 2/24/06)
2006 Mar 7, A four-year-old
Indonesian boy became the latest suspected human casualty of bird flu
as the virus spread in Nigeria and Poland. A Russian virus expert
warned that a human pandemic was highly likely and told the government
to get ready.
(AFP, 3/7/06)
2006 Mar 12, The Cameroon
government announced its first case of bird flu, becoming the fourth
African country to be struck by the virus. New cases were also reported
in Poland and Greece.
(AP, 3/13/06)
2006 Mar 27, Stanislaw Lem
(b.1921), Polish science fiction writer, died in Poland. His work
included “His Master’s Voice” (1968). His best-known work, "Solaris,"
was adapted into films by director Andrei Tarkovsky (1972) and by
Steven Soderbergh (2002). That version starred George Clooney and
Natascha McElhone.
(AP, 3/27/06)(WSJ, 4/8/06, p.P14)
2006 Mar 31, Prosecutors in Warsaw
filed charges against Poland's last communist leader, Gen. Wojciech
Jaruzelski, in connection with his imposition of martial law in 1981 as
the Soviet-backed regime tried to crush the Solidarity pro-democracy
movement.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 May 5, In Warsaw 2 parties
that opposed Poland's entry into the EU joined the government, raising
hopes for an end to six months of political wrangling.
(AP, 5/5/06)
2006 May 13, Poland’s general
unemployment was running at 18% with youth unemployment at 40%.
(Econ, 5/13/06, Survey p.3)
2006 May 25, Poland welcomed Pope
Benedict XVI with cheers and fluttering yellow and white Vatican flags
as the German-born pontiff started a four-day visit aimed at honoring
predecessor John Paul II and healing wounds from World War II.
(AP, 5/25/06)
2006 May 26, Yukos sold its 53.7%
stake in Mazeikiai to the Polish PKN Orlen oil refining company for
US$1.49 billion. Orlen signed the agreement in Amsterdam with the Yukos
company’s Netherlands-registered subsidiary, Yukos International, which
had all along held the legal title to that stake. The Lithuanian
government had exercised its right to authorize this sale-and-purchase
three days earlier.
(http://cms2000.isn.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=16079)
2006 May 28, Pope Benedict XVI
urged some 900,000 Poles at a giant mass to fight growing secularism by
spreading their Christian faith across Europe and the world. He visited
Auschwitz.
(AFP, 5/28/06)(WSJ, 5/30/06, p.A1)
2006 Jun 10, In Poland several
thousand people staged an international rally in Warsaw in support of
gays, who complained of prejudice, hostility and violence.
(AFP, 6/10/06)
2006 Jun 23, Poland's finance
minister resigned after a prosecutor asked a court to investigate
whether she collaborated with the country's communist-era secret police.
(AP, 6/24/06)
2006 Jul 8, Poland's governing
party accepted the resignation of PM Marcinkiewicz and recommended
party chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the president's twin brother, to
replace him. A group with roots in Poland's anti-communist Solidarity
trade union movement signed an unprecedented accord to join forces with
the country's two main post-communist parties.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 14, Poland's Pres. Lech
Kaczynski (57) swore in his identical twin brother, Jaroslaw, as prime
minister, along with a socially conservative Cabinet made up largely of
the same ministers who resigned in a shake-up days earlier.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 18, Authorities freed
about 100 Poles forced into virtual slavery as Italian and Polish
police arrested 25 people involved in a human trafficking ring that
brought farm workers to Italy.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 28, Poland's conservative
President Lech Kaczynski vowed to campaign for a return of the death
penalty in the European Union.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Aug 9, In Poland the US
specialists secretly removed 90 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from a
research reactor and transferred it to Russia for re-processing.
(SFC, 8/10/06, p.A8)(WSJ, 8/10/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 14, Poland will send at
least 900 troops early next year to bolster the NATO mission in
Afghanistan. NATO said the offer did not ease the immediate need for
2,500 additional soldiers in the violence-wracked south.
(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 29, In Scotland police
found the body of Angelika Kluk (23), a missing Polish student, at
Saint Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in the Anderston area of Glasgow.
(AFP, 9/30/06)
2006 Oct 7, In Poland thousands
marched through the streets of Warsaw, calling for new elections and
the ouster of the government after weeks of political turmoil.
(AP, 10/7/06)
2006 Oct, Poland’s government
passed a law to give politicians greater power to appoint top civil
servants, and scrapped the independent civil-service office.
(Econ, 12/2/06, p.55)
2006 Nov 21, In southern Poland 23
coal miners were killed in an explosion at the Halemba mine.
(AP, 11/23/06)
2006 Dec 6, Cardinal Jozef Glemp
(76) stepped down after more than 25 years as archbishop of Warsaw. He
headed Poland's powerful Roman Catholic Church through the dark days of
martial law and the country's later jump to free-market democracy.
(AP, 12/6/06)
2006 Poland’s government under PM
Jaroslaw Kaczynski created an anti-corruption office.
(AP, 10/6/09)
2007 Jan 4, Polish newspapers
reported that Stanislaw Wielgus (67), who is poised to be sworn in as
archbishop of Warsaw, was a "secret and conscious" collaborator with
Poland's hated communist-era security forces from 1973-1978.
(AFP, 1/4/07)
2007 Jan 5, Stanislaw Wielgus,
Warsaw's incoming archbishop, admitted he had cooperated with the
Communist-era secret police and said he was leaving his fate in the
hands of Pope Benedict XVI.
(AP, 1/6/07)
2007 Jan 7, Stanislaw Wielgus,
Warsaw's new archbishop, resigned over his involvement with the
communist-era secret police. The Vatican said his past actions had
"gravely compromised his authority."
(AP, 1/7/07)
2007 Jan 8, Rev. Janusz Bielanski,
head priest of Krakow's prestigious Wawel Cathedral, left his
post amid allegations he collaborated with secret services of the
communist era, a day after Warsaw's newly-appointed archbishop resigned
in a scandal that shocked the nation.
(AP, 1/8/07)
2007 Jan 19, A Polish court
convicted two doctors and two ambulance workers of participating in a
scheme in which 14 patients were allowed to die, or in some cases
killed with muscle relaxants, in return for kickbacks from funeral
homes. All received prison sentences, ranging from five years to life.
(AP, 1/19/07)
2007 Jan 20, Czech PM Mirek
Topolanek said the US wants to build a radar base in the Czech Republic
as part of its global missile defense system. Poland was also mentioned
as a potential site. Russia in response warned of an arms race.
(AP, 1/20/07)(WSJ, 1/22/07, p.A1)
2007 Jan 21, Zdzislaw Rurarz, a
former Polish ambassador to Japan, died of cancer in Virginia. He
humiliated Poland's communist regime by defecting to the US in 1981 to
protest its imposition of martial law.
(AP, 1/28/07)
2007 Jan 23, Ryszard Kapuscinski
(b.1932), Belarus-born Polish writer and journalist, died following
heart surgery. He gained international acclaim for his books
chronicling wars, coups and revolutions in Africa, the Middle East and
other parts of the world. His books included "The Emperor" (1978), a
chronicle of the decline of Haile Selassie's regime in Ethiopia. In
1981 he published "Shah of Shahs," a book about the 1979 Islamic
revolution that toppled Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. His last
book “Travels With Herodotus” was published shortly after his death.
(AP, 1/24/07)(WSJ, 6/9/07, p.P8)(SSFC, 7/22/07, p.M1)
2007 Feb 16, In Poland Antoni
Macierewicz (b.1948), vice-minister of national defense, authored a
report on the recently disbanded WSI (military intelligence service)
that named dozens of current and former agents.
(Econ, 2/24/07, p.63)(www.warsawvoice.pl/view/13967)
2007 Feb 19, Gen. Nikolai
Solovtsov, a top Russian general, warned that Poland and the Czech
Republic risk being targeted by Russian missiles if they agree to host
a proposed US missile defense system.
(AP, 2/19/07)
2007 Feb 26, In Poland a new book,
"Priests In The Face Of The Security Services" by Rev. Tadeusz
Isakowicz-Zaleski, dredged up more painful allegations from Poland's
Communist era, naming some 30 Roman Catholic priests, including several
bishops, as registered informants with the secret police.
(AP, 2/26/07)
2007 Mar 3, Pope Benedict named
Kazimierz Nycz, a bishop with a spotless record, as archbishop of
Warsaw to replace a prelate who resigned in disgrace after admitting he
spied for the communist police.
(Reuters, 3/3/07)
2007 Apr 12, Polish officials said
Google plans to open an operations center in Wroclaw later this year,
creating 200 new jobs and boosting the city's efforts to become a
technology hub.
(AP, 4/12/07)
2007 Apr 25, Barbara Blida (57), a
former Polish government minister, committed suicide in her bathroom as
police searched her house in connection with corruption allegations.
Blida, a lawmaker for the post-communist Democratic Left Alliance from
1989-2005 and construction minister from 1993-1996, was suspected of
taking and receiving material gains. The raid was part of an
investigation into corruption allegations against 14 people.
(AP, 4/25/07)
2007 May 11, Poland's highest
court struck down the key provisions of a new law requiring that up to
700,000 Poles with public service jobs be screened for past
collaboration with the communist-era secret police.
(AP, 5/11/07)
2007 May 21, Polish doctors
launched a nationwide open-ended strike, demanding a pay raise amid
complaints that the health system is underfunded and medical
professionals are overworked.
(AP, 5/22/07)
2007 Jun 3, Pope Benedict XVI
named four new saints from France, Malta, the Netherlands and Poland at
a ceremony in St. Peter's Square. Among those honored was Sister Marie
Eugenie de Jesus Milleret, a French nun who in 1839 founded the
Religious of the Assumption to educate young girls; the Rev. George
Preca of Malta, who founded the Society of Christian Doctrine in 1932
as a group of lay people who teach the faith to others; the Rev. Szymon
z Lipnicy of Poland, a Franciscan monk who comforted Poles afflicted by
the plague that broke out in Krakow from 1482-83 and died of it
himself; and the Rev. Charles of St. Andrew (Dublin), who was born
Karel Van Sint Andries Houben in the Netherlands in 1821.
(AP, 6/3/07)
2007 Jun 8, A European
investigator issued a report saying the CIA ran secret prisons in
Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2005 to interrogate detainees in the
war on terror.
(AP, 6/8/07)
2007 Jun 10, Former Polish
president and Nobel laureate Lech Walesa said he has published on the
Internet about 500 pages of files kept on him by the communist-era
secret police in order to disprove allegations he collaborated with
them in the 1980s.
(AP, 6/10/07)
2007 Jun 27, A special commission
of Poland's Roman Catholic Church said that documents in secret police
files showed "about a dozen" living bishops had ties to the
communist-era secret services.
(AP, 6/27/07)
2007 Jul 9, Poland’s PM Jaroslaw
Kaczynski fired his deputy, Andrzej Lepper, over corruption
allegations, throwing the future of Poland's conservative governing
coalition into doubt and raising the possibility of early elections.
Kaczynski also fired Sports Minister Tomasz Lipiec, of his own Law and
Justice party.
(AP, 7/9/07)
2007 Jul 22, A bus carrying Polish
pilgrims from a holy site in the French Alps plunged off a steep
mountain road, crashed into a river bed and burst into flames, killing
26 people.
(AFP, 7/22/07)
2007 Jul 30, The European
Commission said it was seeking a court injunction against Polish plans
to build a key continental highway to prevent permanent damage to the
Rospuda Valley, a "unique environmental site."
(AFP, 7/30/07)
2007 Aug 4, Zbigniew Krakowski
(56), a Polish sea captain in charge of the 2,000-ton Jork, crashed his
ship into an unmanned gas platform in the North Sea while drunk. The
platform, owned by US firm ConocoPhillips, went out of action with
losses at 615,000 pounds a month in revenue. In November Krakowski was
jailed for 12 months.
(AFP, 11/2/07)
2007 Aug 5, A junior partner in
Poland's ruling coalition said it was pulling out of the partnership
and withdrawing its two ministers from government in a move that could
set the scene for early legislative elections.
(AFP, 8/5/07)
2007 Aug 13, Poland's fractious
governing coalition came to an end when the country's president
dismissed four Cabinet ministers from two junior partners, clearing the
way for an early election expected this fall.
(AP, 8/13/07)
2007 Sep 1, In Poland 2 small
planes collided during an acrobatic display at the Radom Air Show
killing both pilots.
(AP, 9/1/07)
2007 Sep 7, Poland's parliament
voted to dissolve itself, forcing an election that the government had
sought to end persistent political turbulence. President Lech Kaczynski
set the vote for Oct. 21, two years ahead of schedule.
(AP, 9/7/07)
2007 Sep 25, Poland began
publishing a list of public figures who either collaborated with or
were spied on by its old secret police before 1989.
(AP, 9/25/07)
2007 Oct 2, Magda Pniewska (26), a
Polish woman, was shot in the head and died after being caught in the
cross-fire between two gunmen in a residential street in London. On
April 22, 2008, Armel Gnango (17) was convicted of murder for being
involved in the gunfight.
(AFP, 10/3/07)(AFP, 5/22/08)
2007 Oct 3, The Polish ambassador
to Iraq was slightly wounded and two civilians, including a bodyguard,
were killed in a roadside bomb attack in downtown Baghdad. About 900
Polish troops are stationed training Iraqi personnel and 21 have died
during the conflict. The US military said it had discovered a list of
some 500 al Qaeda militants recruited to fight in Iraq from a range of
European, Middle East and north African countries.
(AP, 10/3/07)(Reuters, 10/3/07)
2007 Oct 10, Police in the eastern
Polish town of Kazimierz Dolny pushed their way into a convent and
evicted about 65 rebellious ex-nuns, arresting the mother superior and
a monk who had occupied the complex with them illegally for two years.
The women had taken over the building in a rebellion against the
Vatican, which had ordered the replacement of their mother superior,
Jadwiga Ligocka.
(AP, 10/10/07)
2007 Oct 10, Ministers from
Azerbaijan, Georgia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine signed a deal to
build an oil pipeline linking the Black and Baltic seas.
(WSJ, 10/11/07, p.A18)
2007 Oct 21,
A pro-business opposition party that wants to bring Poland's
troops home from Iraq was headed to an overwhelming victory in
parliamentary elections, exit polls showed, setting it up to oust the
prime minister's staunchly pro-U.S. government. The opposition Civic
Platform party ousted PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski's government in the
parliamentary elections.
(AP, 10/21/07)(AP, 10/21/08)
2007 Oct 22,
In Poland election results showed pro-business Civic Platform,
led by Donald Tusk, beating PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski's nationalist
conservatives by nearly 10 percentage points, enough to allow them to
form a coalition government with an allied party. The incoming
government promised to negotiate a tougher deal with the US when it
comes to hosting a missile defense base. Civic Platform won 209 seats
in the 460-member lower house.
(AP, 10/22/07)(Econ, 10/27/07, p.59)
2007 Nov 5, Poland's prime
minister-designate Donald Tusk said in a published interview that
the new government plans to end the country's role in the US-led
coalition in Iraq in its "current form" next year. Poland's
conservative PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski handed in his resignation to his
twin, President Lech Kaczynski.
(AP, 11/5/07)(AFP, 11/5/07)
2007 Nov 14, In Poland members of
the 460-member lower house, or Sejm, agreed to make April 13 an annual
"Day of Remembrance of Victims of the Katyn Crime,” for more than
14,000 Polish officers who were captured at the start of World War II
and killed by Soviet secret police in the Katyn forest.
(AP, 11/14/07)
2007 Nov 16, Poland's new PM
Donald Tusk formally took office along with a team of former
anti-communist dissidents.
(AP, 11/16/08)
2007 Nov 17, The new Polish
Defense Minister Bogdan Klich said Poland will end next year its
mission in Iraq, where it currently deploys 900 soldiers.
(AP, 11/17/07)
2007 Nov 27, PM Donald Tusk
announced that Poland will drop its opposition to Moscow's bid to join
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in a
drive to improve ties with Russia.
(AP, 11/27/07)
2007 Nov 30, Poland's new PM
Donald Tusk paid a low-key visit to Lithuania on his first foreign
trip. Lithuania and Poland were locked in a dispute about their
relative share of the future output of a nuclear power plant that the
two countries, plus Latvia and Estonia, planned to build in Lithuania
by 2015.
(www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/1196435824.82)
2007 Nov, In Poland the Gdansk
Shipyard, in order to avoid bankruptcy, was sold Ukrainian firm Donbass
for $400 million. The transaction, notified to the OCCP in October
2007, consisted in ISD Polska, a company belonging to the Donbass
Group, taking control over the shipyard.
(Econ, 5/30/09,
p.52)(www.uokik.gov.pl/en/press_office/press_releases/art98.html)
2007 Dec 20, Estonia, Hungary,
Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech
Republic halted land and sea border controls at midnight in a wave of
new members of Europe's passport-free Schengen zone. They all joined
the EU on May 1, 2004.
(AFP, 12/20/07)(WSJ, 12/21/07, p.A1)
2007 Andrzej Wajda (81), Poland’s
leading film maker, completed “Katyn,” based on the letters and diaries
of victims murdered by Soviet secret police in 1943.
(Econ, 1/26/08, p.81)
2008 Jan 11, Belgium, France and
Poland pledged to provide the resources needed to launch a European
Union peacekeeping force for Chad and the Central African Republic.
(AP, 1/11/08)
2008 Jan 23, A Polish military
plane carrying 20 passengers and crew crashed in flames in northwestern
Poland, killing all aboard including an air force general.
(AP, 1/23/08)
2008 Mar 1, A violent storm
plagued parts of Europe and deaths rose to 10 after two people in
Poland were killed by falling objects because of hurricane-strength
winds. Germany reported 2 deaths, the Czech Rep. 2 deaths and 4 more in
Austria.
(AP, 3/2/08)
2008 May 5, Polish authorities
arrested the Kuwaiti ambassador's son (23) for briefly abducting three
Jewish teenagers at a hotel and claiming he had a bomb. Police said a
heavily intoxicated Mohammad A. had pulled three 16-year-old Brazilians
into their sixth-floor room of Warsaw's Holiday Inn.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 12, Irena Sendler
(b.1910), Polish savior of children in the Warsaw ghetto, died in
Warsaw.
(Econ, 5/24/08, p.110)(www.irenasendler.org/)
2008 Jun 18, Witold Waszczykowski,
the chief Polish negotiator on missile defense with the United States,
said Washington has been talking with Lithuania about basing part of a
missile defense system in that country in case negotiations with Poland
break down.
(AP, 6/18/08)
2008 Jul 4, Poland rejected a US
offer to boost its air defenses in return for basing a "missile shield"
on Polish soil but PM Donald Tusk said Poland remains open for further
talks with Washington.
(Reuters, 7/4/08)
2008 Jul 11, In Serbia a bus
carrying Polish tourists overturned north of Belgrade, killing six
people and injuring nearly 40.
(AP, 7/11/08)
2008 Jul 13, In Poland Bronislaw
Geremek (76), former foreign minister (1997-2000), died in a car
accident near Lubien. He was an icon in the struggle against communist
rule and a founding member of the Solidarity trade union.
(AFP, 7/13/08)(Econ, 7/26/08, p.98)
2008 Jul 25, Energy companies in
the three Baltic states and Poland agreed to set up a joint venture to
develop a nuclear power plant in Lithuania.
(Reuters 7/25/08)
2008 Aug 14, The US and Poland
struck a deal to install a missile defense facility in the ex-communist
state.
(AP, 8/15/08)
2008 Aug 20, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and her Polish counterpart signed a deal to build a US
missile defense base in Poland, an agreement that prompted an
infuriated Russia to warn of a possible attack against the former
Soviet satellite. The deal included an American Patriot anti-aircraft
and anti-missile battery in Poland.
(AP, 8/20/08)(Econ, 8/23/08, p.44)
2008 Sep 5, In Poland police
detained Krzysztof B. (45), in the eastern city of Siedlce, after his
wife and daughter came forward with the allegations that he had
imprisoned and raped his daughter (21) for 6 years fathering 2
children, who were put up for adoption.
(AP, 9/9/08)
2008 Sep 12, Poland's last
communist leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, and seven other
Soviet-era officials went on trial over the declaration of martial law
more than a quarter of a century ago. The 1981 decision led to the
deaths of dozens of people and the jailing of hundreds more.
(Reuters, 9/12/08)
2008 Oct 4, A ceremony in
Diwaniyah marked the departure of Polish troops from Iraq. Poland sent
combat troops into Iraq as part of the US-led coalition and had 2,500
troops deployed there at its peak. The last 900 were being pulled out
this month. Two US helicopters collided while landing at a base in
Baghdad. One Iraqi soldier was killed.
(AP, 10/4/08)(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Nov 5, Russia will deploy
missiles near NATO member Poland in response to US missile defense
plans, President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday in his first state of
the nation speech.
(AP, 11/5/08)
2008 Nov 7, Mieczyslaw Rakowski
(81), Poland's last communist-era party chairman and prime minister,
died. Rakowski, a historian and journalist, was chairman of the
communist Polish United Workers' Party from July 1989 until the party
was dissolved at its January 1990 congress during the country's
bloodless transition to democracy.
(AP, 11/8/08)
2008 Nov 8, Mieczyslaw Rakowski
(81), politician and former editor of Polityka magazine, died.
(Econ, 11/22/08, p.99)
2008 Nov 23, In Georgia gunfire
that broke out as Pres. Saakashvili and Polish Pres. Lech Kaczynski
were traveling near a roadblock at the edge of Georgia-controlled
territory. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said there was no
gunfire from Russian or South Ossetian positions and suggested Georgia
engineered the incident to discredit Russia and South Ossetia. In
Tbilisi Nino Burjanadze, a former ally of Pres. Saakashvili, founded a
new party: the Democratic Movement-United Georgia.
(AP, 11/24/08)(WSJ, 11/24/08, p.A8)
2008 Nov 30, Poland adopted an
economic package for 2009-2010 valued at 24 billion euros (30 billion
dollars) to help weather the impact of the global financial crisis.
(AP, 11/30/08)
2008 Dec 1, A 12-day UN climate
conference opened in Poznan, Poland. During the conference Chief Bill
Erasmus of the Dene nation in northern Canada brought a stark warning
about the climate crisis: The once abundant herds of caribou are
dwindling, rivers are running lower and the ice is too thin to hunt on.
(www.environmentalleader.com/2008/12/01/un-climate-talks-kicks-off-in-poznan/)
2008 Dec 12, In Poland negotiators
at a UN climate conference broke through red tape and freed up millions
of dollars to help poor countries adapt to increasingly severe
droughts, floods and other effects of global warming.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 23, The World Bank
finalized a loan of 975 million euros (1.34 billion dollars) for Poland
to support economic reform plans, in a measure not directly related to
the global economic crisis.
(AP, 12/23/08)
2009 Jan 3, Russian gas flows to
four European Union countries fell normal levels after Moscow cut off
supplies to Ukraine in a pricing row with no talks in sight to resolve
the dispute. Bulgaria's Bulgargaz joined energy firms in Poland,
Romania and Hungary in saying they had noted falls in supply.
(Reuters, 1/3/09)
2009 Jan 8, Dell Inc. announced
that it is moving its Irish manufacturing operations to Poland by 2010,
as part of a cost cutting measure that will result in the loss of some
1,900 Irish jobs.
(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.B4)
2009 Jan 13, In Austria Umar
Israilov (27), a Chechen refugee, was shot dead on a Vienna street.
Officials said they had no proof the killing was political, but human
rights activists said his death was linked to his opposition to
Chechnya's pro-Moscow president. On Jan 28 Austrian authorities
arrested seven suspects, all Chechens, in the killing. On February 19
Polish police arrested Turpal Ali J. (31), a man suspected of killing
Israilov.
(AP, 1/28/09)(AP, 2/22/09)
2009 Feb 4, Poland’s defense
minister stated plans to end military missions in Lebanon, the Golan
Heights and Chad in an effort to cut spending due to the global
economic crisis.
(AP, 2/4/09)
2009 Feb 18, Polish police said
they have detained 78 people, including a priest and a doctor,
suspected of possessing child pornography and spreading it on the
Internet.
(AP, 2/18/09)
2009 Feb 19, US Defense Sec.
Robert Gates, in Europe for NATO talks, signed a new military
cooperation agreement with Poland.
(WSJ, 2/20/09, p.A12)
2009 Feb 27, Leading international
financial institutions said Eastern Europe's struggling banks will
receive euro24.5 billion ($31.1 billion) worth of emergency help to
shore up their battered finances. Regional leaders were scheduled to
meet this weekend. The Hungarian, Polish and Czech currencies
strengthened on the news of the aid package.
(AP, 2/27/09)
2009 Apr 8, Over 100 Afghan
ministers, lawmakers and officials signed a petition opposing a
controversial law that critics say legalizes marital rape. The petition
said the law is unconstitutional and leads toward the "Talibanization"
of Afghanistan's legal system. The petition came as Poland's President
Lech Kaczynski held talks in Kabul with Karzai and reiterated his
country's plans to increase its troop contribution in the country by
400 over the current 1,600 in Ghazni province. A roadside blast hit a
civilian vehicle south of Kandahar city, wounding six civilians. Gen.
David McKiernan, top US general in Afghanistan, met with villagers in
Helmand and Kandahar. He apologized for past mistakes and said he is
now studying the Quran, the Muslim holy book.
(AP, 4/8/09)(AP, 4/10/09)(SFC, 4/10/09, p.A2)
2009 Apr 13, Poland's deadliest
fire in nearly 3 decades tore through a homeless shelter in the
northwest, killing 21 and forcing parents to toss children from windows
to rescuers.
(AFP, 4/13/09)
2009 May 15, Polish gas firm PGNiG
announced that it had signed a deal with the Qatari firm Qatargas for
the supply of one million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per year.
(AP, 5/30/09)
2009 Apr 25, San Francisco
celebrated a new sister city relationship with Krakow, Poland. The
official signing was scheduled to take place in Krakow on July 3.
(SFC, 4/25/09, p.B1)
2009 May 30, Polish Prime Minister
Donald Tusk indicated that Gulf capital was behind the consortium which
bought two of Poland's three historic shipyards this week.
(AFP, 5/30/09)
2009 Jun 30, In Poland officials
began building a new museum of Jewish history in Warsaw that they hope
will become a major cultural landmark. Museum officials say
construction will cost around 150 million zlotys ($47 million) and
should be completed in 2012. An earlier groundbreaking ceremony for the
Museum of the History of Polish Jews took place in 2007 in the presence
of the Polish president, but bureaucratic obstacles then held up
construction.
(AP, 6/30/09)
2009 Jul 14, The European
Parliament elected ex-Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek as its
president, making him the first leader from a former Soviet bloc
country to hold one of the top European Union posts.
(Reuters, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Poland say seven
people died in violent storms.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Sep 17, Pres. Obama said he
is abandoning Bush-era plans for a long-range missile defense system
based in Poland and the Czech Rep. Czechs and Poles expressed rancor
and relief that Obama was scrapping plans for the US missile defense
shield on their territories, reflecting deep divisions over a proposal
that had angered Russia.
(AP, 9/17/09)(SFC, 9/18/09, p.A7)
2009 Sep 18, In Poland a methane
leak in a coal mine set off an explosion that killed 12 miners in the
southwestern city of Ruda Slaska.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 25, Poland approved a law
making chemical castration mandatory for pedophiles in some cases,
sparking criticism from human rights groups.
(Reuters, 9/25/09)
2009 Oct 6, In Poland Mariusz
Kaminski, the head of the anti-corruption office, was charged with
abuse of power after a sting operation in which he encouraged his
agents to fabricate documents and offer bribes.
(AP, 10/6/09)
2009 Oct 10, Polish President Lech
Kaczynski signed the EU’s reform treaty, the Lisbon Treaty, into law,
leaving the Czech Republic as the only country still to ratify the
document.
(Reuters, 10/10/09)
2009 Oct 11, Pope Benedict XVI
canonized five new saints, including Father Damien, a 19th-century
priest who worked with leprosy patients on a Hawaiian island; Zygmunt
Szcezesny Felinski, a 19th-century Polish bishop who defended the
Catholic faith during the years of the Russian annexation; Spaniards
Francisco Coll y Guitart, who founded an order of Dominicans in the
19th century, and Rafael Arniaz Baron, who renounced an affluent
lifestyle at age 22 to live a humble life in a strict monastery and
dedicate himself to prayer; and Jeanne Jugan (d.1879), a French nun,
who helped found the Little Sisters of the Poor.
(AP, 10/11/09)
2009 Nov 26, Polish defense
ministry spokesman Robert Rochowicz said the US and Poland have agreed
terms for stationing US troops in Poland so that the deployment of US
Patriot missiles can start next year.
(AFP, 11/26/09)
2009 Nov 27, Poland's Pres.
Kaczynski's Web site said he has approved legislation that allows for
people to be fined or even imprisoned for possessing or buying
communist symbols.
(AP, 11/27/09)
2009 Dec 2, Poland said it plans
to send 600 more troops to Afghanistan next year.
(AP, 12/2/09)
2009 Dec 16, Germany said it is
donating euro60 million ($87 million) to a new endowment for
Auschwitz-Birkenau to preserve barracks, gas chambers and other
evidence of Nazi crimes at the former death camp in Poland. The
donation is half the amount experts believe is needed to preserve the
camp.
(AP, 12/17/09)
2009 Dec 18, In Poland the Nazis'
infamous iron sign declaring "Arbeit Macht Frei," German for "Work Sets
You Free," was stolen from the entrance of the former Auschwitz death
camp.
(AP, 12/18/09)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Poland
End of file.