Archive for the ‘History’ Category

A winter walk in Warsaw. Actually, a visit to just one site, but an important one – Plac Józef Piłsudski, or Józef Piłsudski Square.

A colonnade, damaged during the war, rises from the square, a fragment of the fomer Saski Palace. An eternal flame and an honor guard of soldiers stands before it. Every Pole knows that this is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
For several years there has been a custom that young couples come here after their wedding to place their bouquets as an offering to the Unknown Soldier. Such a beautiful patriotic gesture to begin their new lives. (more…)

In the last issue of the Forum, we published the first part of this history of mathematics in Poland. The article below continues the topic with a description of the influence of Polish mathematics on world science.

In any discussion of mathematics in Poland, one has to mention Professor J. Łukasiewicz, who created multi-valued logic. For example, if someone says that when visiting Warsaw, she always goes to the theater, and out of ten visits to Warsaw, she went to the theater seven times, we would say that the „degree of participation” is 0.7. There have long been computers built for „fuzzy” logic” and not only binary logic (there is current „1”  – there is no current „0”); they run, for example, the metros in many cities in Japan. (more…)

Is it possible that our country, a land of great poets, writers, and poets, can also be one of the centers of world mathematics? Of course, thanks to the great mathematician, and astronomer, Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543).

Were there others like him? And, by the way, what else can be discovered in the history of mathematics? We start with a few names from the distant past. Some of the young Poles studying at Italian, Austrian, or French universities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries returned to Poland; others went from court to court practicing more applied notions of mathematics. Examples, writes R. Duda, include Witelon of Śląsk (ca.1230-ca. 1280) and Marcin Bylica (ca. 1434-1493; he spent almost his entire adult life in Italy and Hungary, as a professor at universities in Bologna and in Buda, or also as court astrologer to Roman cardinals and Hungarian kings). As we know, Copernicus, after studying at Italian universities, returned to Poland and created his greatw works in Frombork. (more…)

During „the year of Giedroyc”, the figure of Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000), the friend and collaborator of Giedroyc in Kultura, a writer of the highest rank who can be placed on the same level as Miłosz or Gombrowicz, should also be remembered. For years, he was one of the great forgotten, considered enemy number one in the PRL and always erased from textbooks and publishers’ plans. If one did not have access to underground publications, then one did not have any chance to come across his name. This prisoner of the Soviet camps, who also served as a soldier in Anders’ army, a hero of Monte Cassino who lived in Naples after the war, was sentenced to literary nonexistence in communist Poland. His reception in Poland after 1989 was all the stronger because his work appeared suddenly at full creative maturity and raised questions related to philosophy, art, religion, literature, and politics. One can divide his work into three different areas: testimony, fiction, and chronicle.
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When I was a little boy the books by Julius Verne allowed me to travel. I went around the world in 80 days, I visited the oceans with captain Nemo, and I even traveled to the moon. A couple of years later came the time of Łajka, Gagarin, and Armstrong. All of a sudden the mankind was on a brink of conquering space. And this is when, for the first time, I saw a book written by Stanisław Lem. For a teenager in Poland, in the fifties, when everything was a “state secret”, his books about robots, astronauts, and space vehicles were like a magical world.  Lem opened our eyes; his books moved galaxies and planets closer to us, while the technology became more understandable and accessible.
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Feet of the Adam Mickiewicz statue, artists present their Christmas nativity sets. Sometimes on this winter morning, Krakow is covered with heavy fog, and the buildings surrounding the Market Square are hardly noticeable. On other occasions, the brightness of the white snow on a brisk morning is blinding , making it impossible to look at the sparkling navy blue, turquoise, and red forms of the mangers’ architecture. From the Marjacki Church tower sounds the hymn, 12 o’clock strikes,  and  an abundace of  pigeons take flight in front of Sukiennice.

In this surrounding, the contest of nativity sets has been taking place for 60 years. It came about to commemorate and honor the grand buildings of the city. Krakow has been captured in many paintings and poem .  But,  not everyone can paint or write poetry. The creators of these mangers, just like grand artists, wish  to create beauty, enrich the world, and  express their feelings. The group is composed of the working class with tired hands: railway men, bricklayers, and carpenters. But they have imagination, fantasy, and an amazing orientation in spatial geometry. (more…)

The Polish triumph of 1918, the regaining of independence, was short; the indeterminate borders of the state turned out to be a great misfortune. By December 10th, the Red Army had occupied Mińsk; the fight for Vilnius was taking place from January 3-5. After three days of fighting, Polish troops were forced to withdraw from the city. January 3, 1919 is recognized in the most recent literature as the beginning of the Polish-Soviet War.

Throughout the entire war we can see the miraculous hand of fate, the successful attack of the relatively small Polish military against the great Bolshevik divisions, exactly at the time when they were regrouping and in a brief moment of chaos. Another time, the Russians began to withdraw to Lithuania, and the Poles moved in right behind them. There were many such situations. Our military attacked the target directly and agilely avoided being hit; somehow, during the entire war the Polish army and its divisions were not encircled or destroyed.

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On the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the world once again failed to recognize the Polish victims of the Nazi concentration camps. Instead, frequent remarks about “Polish concentration camps” once again reminded us of the extent of distortions and bias against the Polish cause in World War II that appears to be ever present in the English speaking world.  Accordingly, some remarks on the legacy of Auschwitz are in order.

Created pursuant to the 1933 decree on the protection of the German State, the first concentration camps were built in Pre-war Germany.  After the September 1939 invasion of Poland, most of the new concentration camps were built on the conquered Polish territory for the explicit purposes of exterminating undesirable population.  In addition to the well-known Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, at least seven other hub-like concentration camps were built in Poland, each one with a wide network of sub-camps.  Thus, the Germans set up Treblinka Concentration Camp for the Warsaw district, Majdanek Concentration Camp in central Poland for the Zamość region targeted for Arian colonization, and the Stutthof Concentration Camp with over forty auxiliary camps in northern Poland “to serve the needs of the Polish population in Pomerania,” as the German documents phrased it. (more…)

The Chopin family home was blessed.  They were the perfect example of a loving family – dwelling within an intimate, secure atmosphere; all shared a deep, sincere love and respect for each other.  During his youth, Beethoven endured a troubled relationship with his alcoholic father. Bach was orphaned at an early age and had to live off the kindness of his brother. Mozart, the child prodigy, had been exploited shamelessly and was  driven to the point of exhaustion by ceaseless traveling resulting from the overblown ambitions of his father.  But the Chopin family wrapped young Fryderyk in a warm blanket of love and affection, where he was doted on not only by his parents, but by his sisters as well.  We know of the family’s closeness and affection through family correspondence. Even now, Chopinists continue to find new evidence solidifying the picture of an idyllic family life. (more…)