Category Archives: Poland

by | 25 February 2026 · 10:38 pm

Compiling the Auschwitz Report

From The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, by Jonathan Freedland (HarperCollins, 2022), Kindle pp. 241-244:

THE CONVERSATION – part debrief, part interrogation – would last several days. As soon as he heard the men give the outline of their story, Steiner understood that this was bigger than him: the ÚŽ’s leadership needed to hear this. He telephoned Bratislava to speak to Oskar Krasňanský, a chemical engineer by profession who was one of the council’s most senior figures. Steiner urged him to come right away. Jews were not allowed to travel by train, but Krasňanský wangled a permit and was in Žilina later that same day. The head of the Jewish council, the fifty-year-old lawyer and writer Oskar Neumann, joined them twenty-four hours later.

For the officials, the first task was to establish that these two men were who they said they were. That was simple enough: Krasňanský had brought with him the records kept by the council of every transport that had left Slovakia, for what was then destination unknown. There was a card for every deportee, including their name and photograph. So when Fred and Walter gave the date and point of origin of the transports that had taken them away, the records backed them up.

More than that, Fred and Walter were also able to name several of the others who had been jammed into the cattle trucks with them, along with specific individuals who had arrived in Auschwitz on subsequent transports. Each time, the names and the dates tallied. And each time, the escapees were able to confirm the fate of the people on those lists: with next to no exceptions, they were naming the dead.

Krasňanský found these two young men credible right away. They were clearly in a terrible state. Their feet were misshapen and they were completely exhausted; he could see that they were undernourished, that they had eaten almost no food for weeks. He summoned a doctor and between them they decided that the men should stay here, in this basement room, to recover their strength. A couple of beds were brought down.

Yet, for all their physical weakness, Krasňanský was struck by the depth and sharpness of each man’s memory. It was a thing of wonder. The engineer was determined to get their testimony on record and to ensure that it would be unimpeachable.

With that in mind, he decided to interview the two separately, getting each story down in detail and from the beginning, so that the evidence of one could not be said to have contaminated or influenced the other. In sessions lasting hours, Krasňanský asked questions, listened to the answers and wrote detailed shorthand notes. Whatever emotional reaction he had to what he was hearing – which was, after all, confirmation that his community had been methodically slaughtered – he hardly showed it. He kept on asking questions and scribbling down the answers.

Walter alternated between speaking very fast, as if in a torrent, and very slowly, deliberately, as if searching for the exact word. Before the formal, separate interviews, Fred saw how Walter strained to be strictly factual, like a witness in a courtroom, only for the emotional force of the events he was describing repeatedly to prove too much. The younger man could not help himself: he seemed to be reliving those events in the telling, every fibre of his tissue and every pore of his skin back in Auschwitz. After an hour, Walter was utterly drained. And yet he had barely got started.

For the separate interview, Krasňanský ushered him into a room which he locked. It was less a protection against interruption than a security measure, given that the Jewish old people’s home of Žilina was now harbouring two fugitives from the SS, with a Gestapo warrant out for their arrest. (That was another reason to keep them in this building, day and night, for as long as two weeks: if they went out on the street looking like this, they would be noticed. People might start to talk.) Either way, Walter began the conversation by asking for a piece of paper and a pen.

He began to draw a map, the distances as close to scale as he could make them. First, he sketched the inner layout of the main camp, Auschwitz I. Then, and this was more complicated, he drew Birkenau or Auschwitz II, with its two sections, BI and BII, and multiple sub-sections, BIIa, BIIb, BIIc, and so on. Between the two, he drew the Judenrampe, explaining what he had seen and done there. He showed where the behemoths of German industry – IG Farben, Siemens, Krupp and the others – had their factories, powered by slave labour. He showed where, at the far end of Birkenau, stood the machinery of mass murder: the four crematoria, each one combining a gas chamber and set of ovens.

For forty-eight hours, whether separately or together, Walter and Fred described it all: the transports, the ramp, the selection, during which those chosen to work were marched off while those chosen to die were ferried towards the gas. The tattoos for the living, the ovens for the dead. The two men rattled off the dates and estimated numbers of every batch of Jews that had arrived since the late spring of 1942 right up until the week they had made their escape. They spoke in particular detail about the fate of their fellow Slovak Jews and the Czech family camp. Walter admitted that the plight of the latter had been especially close to his heart, given the ties of language and background: perhaps he expected his questioners would feel the same way.

Krasňanský, often joined by Neumann, listened to it all, absorbing every word. Neumann was a lawyer by training and it often felt like a cross-examination as he pressed and pushed Walter and Fred on every aspect of their evidence. Neumann might name an old schoolfriend whom he knew to have been on a specific transport, say in September 1943, asking if the pair knew the fate of that group. They would give their answer, knowing it would be checked against what they had already said about that same transport nine or ten hours earlier. The officials of the Jewish council were looking for inconsistencies, either within the testimony of Fred and Walter or between them. But they found none.

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Filed under Germany, migration, Poland, publishing, religion, slavery, Slovakia, war

by | 25 February 2026 · 12:49 am

Ústredňa Židov in Slovakia

From The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, by Jonathan Freedland (HarperCollins, 2022), Kindle pp. 235-245:

Over a meal, Fred and Walter explained that they needed to meet whatever semblance of a Jewish community they could find: they needed to get word to them, urgently. Čanecký replied that the doctor in Čadca was a Jew by the name of Pollack.

That name rang an instant bell. Back in Nováky, there had been a Dr Pollack scheduled to be on the same transport that took Walter to Majdanek. And yet his name had been removed from the list at the last moment. It turned out that the authorities made a sudden exception for Jewish physicians, bowing to pressure from the Slovak public, especially in rural areas, who overnight found they had no medical care. Tiso had not reckoned with the fact that, though Jews made up only a small portion of Slovakia’s population, they accounted for a big share of the country’s doctors. The president reprieved those Jewish medics who had not already been deported, despatching them to small towns and villages. Given all that, it was wholly believable that the same Dr Pollack was in Čadca. And if he was, then that was the obvious place to start. They needed to get to Čadca immediately. Fred and Walter looked at each other: they should leave right away.

…

The farmer’s last good turn was to point the escapees in the direction of the doctor. His place of work was not what they were expecting or hoping for: Dr Pollack’s clinic was inside the local army barracks. Guarding the door were two soldiers of Slovakia’s pro-Nazi army. Since Walter was the one who knew Pollack, it would fall to him to walk past those men and pretend to be a patient. He girded himself and went in.

He found Pollack’s room and, as soon as he was inside, he saw that, yes, this doctor was the same man he had known in Nováky. Except he was not alone. There was a female nurse at the doctor’s side. Thinking on his feet, Walter said he had come about a ‘gentleman’s disease’ and would prefer it if the woman were to step out.

…

So he explained who he was and where he and the doctor had first met. And then he spoke about Auschwitz. He did it as briefly as he could; still, Pollack paled and began to tremble. Walter understood why. He, Walter, was an emissary from the grave. He was the first of the 60,000 Jews who had been deported from Slovakia between March and October 1942 – half of them to Auschwitz – to have returned to the country. He was bringing the dread news that, of all those thousands, only sixty-seven Slovak Jewish men were still alive in Auschwitz, along with 400 Slovak Jewish women.

‘Where are the rest?’ Pollack asked.

‘The rest are dead,’ Walter replied.

He explained that they had not been ‘resettled’, as those who stayed behind had been told and desperately wanted to believe. They had been murdered.

Pollack himself had been spared back in the spring of 1942, along with his wife and his children. But his parents, his brothers and sisters and their families had all been deported. The doctor had heard nothing from his relatives since 1942. They and the rest of the deportees had disappeared, leaving only silence. And yet Walter’s words still made the doctor shake. Because now he knew.

Collecting himself, Pollack asked what he could do. Now it was Walter’s turn to ask the questions. Was anything left of the organised Jewish community of Slovakia? Did any groups still exist, anything approaching a leadership?

The doctor answered that the ÚŽ, the Ústredňa Židov, the Jewish Centre, or council, in Bratislava, still functioned. It was the only Jewish organisation the regime permitted, tasked now with representing the 25,000 Jews like Pollack who had evaded deportation and lived on. But the ÚŽ had to work discreetly. The doctor could arrange a contact immediately. He then handed over an address where Walter and his friend could stay the night in Čadca: they would be under the roof of a Mrs Beck, apparently a relative of Leo Baeck, the eminent rabbi.

…

A Nazi edict in 1940 had banned every Jewish organisation in Slovakia, replacing them with this single Jewish council, the ÚŽ. The country’s Jewish leaders had debated in a fever the moral rights and wrongs of taking part in such an entity. Some took Walter’s view: that to serve in the ÚŽ was to do the devil’s work for him and to bless it with the credibility of the Jewish community’s own leaders. Others had feared that Jewish refusal would only mean that the fascist devil would perform that work himself and do it more brutally. At least if Jews were involved, there might be a chance to cushion or delay the blow that would soon come raining down on Jewish heads. In the argument that raged, it was the second group that had prevailed.

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Filed under Germany, migration, Poland, religion, slavery, Slovakia, war

by | 24 February 2026 · 3:07 am

Dokarmiaj Ptaki Mądrze / Feed Birds Wisely

Nie karm ptaków chlebem! Don’t feed birds bread!
Nie podawaj produktów przyprawionych i solonych!
Don’t serve spiced and salted products!
Resztki jedzenia, przetworzona żywność, w tym pieczywo, szkodzą ptakom i przyczyniają się do wielu chorób. Zawarta w nich sól jest szkodliwa i może prowadzić do ich odwodnienia i chorób nerek.
Leftover food, processed food, including baked goods, harms birds and contributes to many diseases. The salt contained in them is harmful and can lead to their dehydration and kidney disease.

Czym dokarmiać ptaki? What to feed the birds?
Ziarna zbóż: słonecznik, pszenica, kasze, kukurydza, płatki owsiane, otręby.
Cereal grains: sunflower, wheat, groats, corn, oat flakes, bran.
Gotowane warzywa bez soli: pokrojona marchew, buraki, ziemniaki, kapusta.
Vegetables prepared without salt: sliced carrots, beetroots, potatoes, cabbage.

Jak dokarmiać ptaki? How to feed birds?
Nie wrzucaj jedzenia do wody! Don’t throw food in the water!
Pokarm podostaw ptakom na brzegu, w miejscu spokojnym, czystym i suchym.
Leave food for the birds on the shore, in a quiet, clean, and dry place.

Source photograph

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Filed under disease, food, language, Poland

by | 23 February 2026 · 8:07 am

Planning Escape from Auschwitz

From The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, by Jonathan Freedland (HarperCollins, 2022), Kindle pp. 183-187:

And so by the early spring of 1944 there was a double urgency to Walter’s determination to escape. Those 5,000 or so Czechs who had entered the family camp in the second wave, arriving on 20 December 1943, would be put to death exactly six months later on 20 June. That was beyond doubt; it was the hardest of deadlines. But now there was the prospect of an even more imminent, and much larger, slaughter: hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews would board trains for Auschwitz in a matter of weeks, trains that would take them to the very gates of the gas chambers.

Walter had his motive and now he acquired a mentor. After the Poles, the most successful escapees from Auschwitz were Soviet prisoners of war. Many thousands had been brought to the camp at the start, dying in the cold and dirt as they worked as slaves to build Birkenau. But there was another group, Walter estimated there were about a hundred of them, known to the Auschwitz veterans as the ‘second-hand prisoners of war’. Captured in battle, they had been sent initially to regular PoW camps but then despatched to Auschwitz as punishment for bad behaviour, including attempted escape. Among them was one Dmitri Volkov.

Not for the first time, Walter had reason to be grateful for the Russian he had taught himself back in Trnava. It meant he could talk with the second-hand PoWs as he registered them, even those whose appearance was forbidding. To Walter, Volkov was a bear of a man from the land of the Cossacks, Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine. Enormous and with dark, deep-set eyes, and still in his Red Army uniform, he looked like someone to be approached with care.

But with time they got to know each other, eventually striking an unspoken bargain not dissimilar to the high-school deal that had seen Walter trade lessons in Slovak for tuition in High German. Volkov allowed Walter to practise his Russian. In return, the young pen-pusher handed over his allocation of bread and quasi-margarine, honouring a vow he had made to himself much earlier: that he would not take his official ration so long as he had access to food from elsewhere. He noticed that Volkov did not eat even that meagre portion, instead cutting it into quarters, to be shared with his comrades.

They began talking. Not, at first, about the camp, but about the great Russian literary masters Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, moving on to the Soviet writers Gorky, Ehrenburg and Blok. Eventually, Volkov began to lower his guard.

He revealed that he was no mere conscript but a captain in the Red Army. In making this admission, Volkov was taking a huge risk: it was Nazi practice to shoot all Soviet officers. But he had decided to trust Walter, and not only with that information. He also told him of his own experience of escape, for the captain had once broken out of the Nazi concentration camp of Sachsenhausen. As his teenage pupil listened, and over several days, Volkov proceeded to give Walter a crash course in escapology.

Some lessons were intensely practical. He told him what to carry and what not to carry. In the second category was money. Kanada might be overflowing with the stuff, but it was dangerous. If you had money, you would be tempted to buy food from a shop or a market, and that meant contact with people which was always to be avoided. Better to live off the land, stealing from fields and remote farms. Also not to be carried, at least when making the initial escape, was meat: the SS Alsatians would sniff it out immediately.

So: no money, no meat. As for what he would need, that category was larger, starting with a knife for hunting or self-defence, and a razor blade in case of imminent capture. That was a cardinal rule for Volkov: ‘Don’t let them take you alive.’ Also: matches, to cook the food you had stolen. And salt: a man could live on salt and potatoes for months. A watch was essential, not least because it could double as a compass.

The tips kept coming. All movement was to be done at night; no walking in daylight. It was vital to be invisible. If they could see you, they could shoot you. Don’t imagine you could run away; a bullet would always be faster.

Keep an eye on the time, hence the watch. Don’t be looking for a place to sleep when dawn breaks; make sure you’ve found a hiding place while it’s still dark.

But some of the advice belonged in the realm of psychology. Trust no one; share your plans with no one, including me. If your friends know nothing, they’ll have nothing to reveal when they’re tortured once you’re gone. That advice fitted with what Walter already knew for himself: that there were others eager to give up your secrets. The Politische Abteilung, the Political Department of the SS, had built up quite a network of informers among the prisoners, always listening out for talk of escape and revolt. (They were recruited by a threat from the SS that, if they refused to betray their fellow prisoners, their relatives back home would be murdered.) You never knew who you were really talking to. Best to say little.

Volkov had more wisdom to impart. Have no fear, even of the Germans. In Auschwitz, in their uniforms and with their guns, they look invincible. But each one of them, on his own, is just as small and fragile as any other human being. ‘I know they can die as quickly as anybody because I’ve killed enough of them.’ Above all: remember that the fight only starts when you’ve broken out of the camp. No euphoria, no elation. You cannot relax while you are on Nazi-ruled soil, not even for a second.

Walter did his best to take it all in, to remember it along with the mountain of numbers and dates that was piling ever higher in his mind. But there was one last bit of advice, for the escape itself.

The Nazis’ tracker dogs were trained to detect even the faintest odour of human life. If there was a single bead of sweat on your brow, they would find you. There was only one thing that defeated them.

Tobacco, soaked in petrol and then dried. And not just any tobacco. It had to be Soviet tobacco. Volkov must have seen the gleam of scepticism in Walter’s eye. ‘I’m not being patriotic,’ he said. ‘I just know machorka. It’s the only stuff that works.’

Volkov let Walter know that he had his own plans for escape and that he would not be sharing them with Walter or anyone else. He was happy to serve as the younger man’s teacher. But he would not be his partner.

For that role, there could only ever be one person. Someone whom Walter trusted wholly and who trusted him, someone whom he had known before he was in this other, darker universe, someone who, for that very reason, had an existence in Walter’s mind independent of Auschwitz: Fred Wetzler.

More than 600 Jewish men from Trnava had been sent to Auschwitz in 1942. By the spring of 1944, only two were still alive: Walter Rosenberg and Alfréd Wetzler. All the rest had either been swiftly murdered, like Fred’s brothers, or suffered the slow death in which Auschwitz-Birkenau specialised, worn down by disease, starvation and arbitrary violence, a group that almost certainly included Fred’s father. Fred and Walter had grown up with those 600 boys and men – as teachers and schoolmates, family friends and acquaintances, playground enemies and romantic rivals – and now every last one of them was gone. From the world they had both known, only Fred and Walter were left.

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Filed under Germany, Hungary, migration, military, Poland, Russia, slavery, Slovakia, Ukraine

by | 22 February 2026 · 12:10 am

Old Polish Slang

My latest compilation from Culture.pl includes an article by Patryk Zakrewski (with translations by MW) titled Kapewu? A Guide to Old Polish Slang. Here are some excerpts.

Antek

In Kraków, he was called an ‘ancymon’, while in Lembryczek (pre-war slang for the city of Lviv), a street urchin was a ‘baciar’ (from the Hungarian ‘betyár’ – a hoodlum or goon). A baciar spoke bałak, a Lvovian slang. Elsewhere in Galicia, such rascals and scoundrels were called, in the plural, ‘sztrabancle’ (from the German ‘strabanzen’ – to loiter), and in Poznań, they went under the names of ‘szczuny’, ‘zyndry’ or ‘ejbry’. There were, of course, many other similar terms, because Poland was also full of andrusy and wisusy.

In Warsaw, and especially in its riverside neighbourhoods of Powiśle and Czerniaków, a street urchin was simply an ‘antek’ – which is also a common diminutive of the name Antoni. The satirical newspaper Trubadur Warszawy (Warsaw’s Troubadour) explained the term this way in the year 1927:

I’m Antek. I can’t swear that it was the name I was given during baptism, but here, near the Wisła, the custom is that even if you’re called Hipolit, Konstanty or – imagine it – Maurycy, people’ll still call you Antek anyway. Trans. MW

Unfortunately, sometimes a kind-hearted antek would grow up to become a majcher- and szpadryna-carrying hooligan (the terms for a knife and brass knuckles, respectively). If he lived in Lviv, he would have been called a ‘chachar’. And if a chachar wants to give you bałabuchy, or zamalować kłapacz (both terms for beating you up), you should know that there is nothing pleasant coming. It could lead to a fest magulanka (a mighty fight). But let’s set aside violence and focus on etymology instead.

‘Chachar’, just like ‘baciar’, is Hungarian in origin. It spread all over the southern voivodeships of Poland, taking on a different meaning in each region. In Kraków, and in the east of the Lesser Poland region in general, chachars were simply street urchins. The article Śląskie Wyzwiska (Silesian Invectives), published in Kłosy in 1934, states that:

A ‘chachar’, or an unemployed person in general, received their name only recently; back in the day, a chachar was mostly a lazybones avoiding work. Trans. MW

Becja

At the beginning of the 20th century, it was common for an antek to become a bek. Stefan Okrzeja was one, and so were Józef Piłsudski and later Prime Minister Walery Sławek… In underground slang, ‘bek’ was a Polish Socialist Party (PPS) fighter.

A woman fighter, such as Faustyna Morzycka or Wanda Krahelska, was called a ‘beczka’ (like the Polish word for barrel), and a group of beki (the plural of bek) were ‘becja’. Members of the PPS, whether they were beki or agitaje (agitators), were called ‘pepesiacy’ or ‘papuasi’. The latter variant, stemming from the Polish name for the inhabitants of the island of Papua, was particularly in vogue among PPS’s political enemies.

Beki were armed with bronki (Browning pistols; the term is similar to Bronek, a diminutive for the name Bronisław) and participated in eksy, or expropriations of Russian property in the name of the revolutionary cause. They also performed prowoki and szpiki, or committed assassinations of prowokatorzy (instigators) and szpiedzy (spies).

The conspirators were particularly fond of abbreviations: ‘dru’ was an underground printing shop (from Polish ‘drukarnia’) and ‘gra’ was a good trafficking spot (from Polish ‘granica’ – the border). Szwarc (contraband), which included flugblaty (leaflets) and bibuła (books; literally, blotting paper), was usually smuggled by dromaderki (female smugglers of illegal publications, called this after the dromedary camel).

Many beki and beczki suffered setbacks during their operations. After getting caught by a fijoł (a gendarme), a rewirus or a stójkus (both meant ‘cop’), they ended up in ul (jail or prison; literally, a beehive) and were then transported to cytla (Warsaw’s Citadel) or białe niedźwiedzie (Siberia; literally, white bears). As you can see, prison terminology was quite elaborate in this period.

Some of the most original terms include ‘duma’ (stemming from the name for the Russian Parliament, which was created in 1906 – but meaning also ‘pride’ in Polish) and ‘skałon’ (created on the basis of the General-Governor responsible for the bloody repressions which followed the 1905 revolution). Both of these words designated prison toilets.

Bradziażić

A birbant, a bon vivant, or a bibosz – somebody leading a riotous life, never one to avoid fun – was known to bradziażyć. In Old Polish, you could similarly say that such a person bisurmani się or lampartuje (all terms for partying). He would flanerować (roam) from pub to pub, often tempted to gamble. This usually made it easy for him to wyprztykać się z floty (run out of money)… but there’s no glik (luck) without risk!

As a result of bradziażenie, it’s easy to become a bradziaga. This word comes from Russian and designates a vagrant or globetrotter. Such a free-floating person was known in Lviv as a ‘makabunda’ (a distorted form of ‘vagabond’). In Silesia, a ragamuffin was a ‘haderlok’ or a ‘szlapikorc’, while in Poznań, he would be called a ‘łatynda’, ‘opypłus’ or ‘szuszwol’.

‘Menel’, a word for a ‘bum’, still used in all parts of Poland, has an interesting etymology. In one of his pre-war columns, Stefan Wiechecki described this dialogue, reportedly overheard in a courtroom:

‘He called me a “menelik”…’

‘But there’s nothing offensive about that. Menelik is the name of one of the kings of Abyssinia’, replied the judge.

‘Your Honour, it’s possible that it designates a king in Abyssinia, but here, in Szmulowizna, it’s something altogether different.’

The exotic dress of the Emperor of Ethiopia fascinated the Warsaw populace to such an extent that peculiarly dressed people began to be called by his name. Menelik II’s honourific was negus negesti (king of kings), and as a result, the slang term ‘nygus’ (loafer, good-for-nothing) became part of the Polish language.

The people of Warsaw also insulted each other (for no discernible reason) with the use of names such as kopernik and gambeta. While the former referred, of course, to the famed Polish astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus, Leon Gambetta was a French statesman during the Second French Empire and the Third French Empire periods.

…

Jak bonie dydy

‘Jak bonie dydy’, ‘jak bum cyk-cyk’, ‘jak pragnę zdrowia’, ‘jak pragnę podskoczyć’, ‘jak babcię drypcie’ and ‘jak Bozię kocham’ don’t always make sense, but they all mean something like ‘scout’s honour’, ‘on my mother’s life’, or ‘I swear to God’. Each of these phrases is a synonym for the phrase ‘na słowo honoru’ (you have my word).

But such obiecanki cacanki (empty promises) can be misleading. What if the other person bierze nas pod pic (tries to hustle us) or wstawia farmazon (tries to pull one over on us; the Polish phrase stems from Russian ‘farmazirowat’’, which means to pretend or simulate)?

We all know someone who will swear pod chajrem (literally, risking a curse) that they will do something na zicher (for sure), but in the end, they’re sure to only ever fulfil that promise ‘na świętego Dygdy, co go nie ma nigdy’ – which would mean something along the same lines as ‘when the Cubs win the World Series’ did a couple of years ago.

Kapewu?

Questions like ‘Kapewu?’ can sometimes still be heard in Poland, but today, the phrase is mostly associated with the slang of the heroes of cult children’s TV series from the 1970s like Podróż za Jeden Uśmiech (A Trip for One Smile) and Stawiam na Tolka Banana (My Bet’s on Tolek Banan). Today, you’re more likely to be asked questions like ‘kumasz?’, ‘czaisz?’ ‘jarzysz?’, ‘kminisz?’ or ‘kapujesz?’. They all mean ‘do you get it?’ – and the last of them can teach us something about the etymology of kapewu.

The Polish ‘kapować’ probably came from the German capiren or Italian capire, meaning ‘to understand’. Forms of the latter, like ‘capito’ and ‘capisce’, are sometimes still present in Polish slang. For example, the rapper Włodi rhymed on the Molesta group’s debut album: ‘Źli i łysi to klima, kapiszi?’ (The bad and the bald are my squad, understood?).

Kapewu is a humorous, quasi-French form of the Polish ‘kapować’, created as analogous to phrases like ‘parlez-vous’ and ‘comprenez-vous’. Other examples of such French stylisation are two phrases present in an old Warsaw local dialect: ‘iść de pache’ (walk hand in hand) and ‘przepraszam za pardą’ (I’m sorry for interrupting or bothering you).

In the above-quoted book about schoolchildren’s slang from the late 1930s, Ignacy Schreiber lists several words for joy and approval. These include words like ‘byczo’, ‘morowo’, klawo’, but also a mysterious exclamation: ‘sikalafą!’. This stemmed from the French ‘si qu’a la font’, which is itself a slang term which means ‘that’s the way it goes’ or ‘that’s life’ (I’m tempted to write here: ‘that’s c’est la vie’ to preserve the spirit of other French loans in Polish slang).

But Poles willing to admit that something was cool had a broader repertoire: szafa gra (literally, the jukebox’s on), gra gitara (literally, the guitar plays), gites bomba and cymes pikes.

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Filed under France, Germany, Hungary, language, Poland, Russia

by | 18 February 2026 · 5:58 am

Benedictions in Polish & Italian

Błogosławieni, którzy z wiarą znoszą cierpienia, jaki zadają im inni, i z serca przebacają;
błogosławieni, którzy patrzą w oczy odrzuconym i usuniętym na margines okazująć im bliskość;
błogosławieni, którzy rozpoznają Boga w każdym człowieku i walczą o to, aby i inni to odkryli;
błogosławieni, którzy chronią i obają o wspólny dom;
błogosławieni, którzy rezygnują ze swojego dobrobytu dla dobra innych;
błogosławieni, którzy modlą się i pracują na rzecz pełnej jedności chrześcijan…
Wszyscy oni są nosicielami miłosierdzia i czułości Boga i na pewno otrzymają od Niego zasłużoną nagrodę.

Beati coloro che sopportano con fede i mali che altri infliggono loro e perdonano di cuore;
beati coloro che guardano negli occhi gli scartati e gli emarginati mostrando loro vicinanza;
beati coloro che riconoscono Dio in ogni persona i lottano perche anche altri lo scoprano;
beati coloro che proteggono e curano la casa comune; beati coloro che rinunciano al proprio benessere per il bene degli altri;
beati coloro che pregano e lavorano per la piena comunione dei cristiani…
Tutti costoro sono portatori della misericordia e della tenerezza di Dio, e certamente riceveranno da Lui la ricompensa meritata.
Papież Franciszek

Google translation from Polish:
Blessed are those who endure with faith the sufferings inflicted on them by others and forgive from the heart;
blessed are those who look into the eyes of those who are rejected and marginalized, showing them closeness;
blessed are those who recognize God in every person and fight for others to discover it;
blessed are those who protect and care for our common home;
blessed are those who give up their own well-being for the good of others;
blessed are those who pray and work for the full unity of Christians…
All of them are bearers of God’s mercy and tenderness, and they will surely receive from Him the reward they deserve.

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Filed under Italy, language, Poland, religion

by | 17 February 2026 · 9:03 am

Papal Thoughts on Kielce

Papież Jan Paweł II w homilii wygłoszonej 3 czerwca 1991 w Masłowie k. Kielc:
Pope John Paul II in his homily delivered on June 3, 1991, in Masłów near Kielce.

W lipcu 1946 roku w Kielcach,
zginęło ze zbrodniczych rąk wielu braci Żydów.
Polecamy ich dusze Bogu.

In July 1946, in Kielce,
many of our Jewish brothers were slain by murderous hands.
We entrust their souls to God.

Papież Franciszek w liście z 1 marca 2016 do rabina Abrahama Skorki.
Pope Francis on March 1, 2016, in his letter to rabbi Abraham Skórka.

Odnośnie tego, co napisałeś mi dziś na temat Kielc, zawsze będę po stronie przebaczenia i pojednania. Otwarte rany to nic dobrego, i mogą prowadzić do dalszych zakażeń. Ale kiedy się zasklepią, zostają jedynie blizny które, z czasem, stają się integralną pozostałością w naszej historii.

Regarding what you told me about Kielce, my position has always been and will continue to be filled with forgiveness and reconciliation. Open wounds are bad and can produce other kinds of infections. But once they are closed, only scars will remain which, with time, will become integral relics of our history.

Respecto a lo que me hace saber de Kielce, mi postura siempre fue y sigue siendo del perdón y reconciliación. Las heridas abiertas hacen mal y producen otro tipo de infecciones, en cambio, una vez cerradas sólo quedan cicatrices que, a la larga, se integran en el camino de nuestra historia.

Thoughts inscribed on the wall of ul. Planty 7, Kielce, site of the pogrom of 4 July 1946.

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Filed under Argentina, language, nationalism, Poland, religion

by | 12 February 2026 · 3:06 am

Sugihara’s List and Tadeusz Romer

A few months ago, my wife found an interesting book in a Polish bookstore here. It is titled Lista Sugihary (Sugihara’s List), by Zofia Hartman, a graduate student from Krakow, the site of Schindler’s List, which is now well-known throughout Poland, while Chiune Sugihara remains almost entirely unknown. The Polish edition of her book was published in 2024 by Austeria Press. An English edition titled Sugihara’s List, published in 2025, can be ordered from YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City.

In looking for the English edition, I found a Youtube video of a book talk featuring Zofia Hartman in October 2025 at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City, sponsored by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York. Hartman’s presentation was followed by a talk by Jolanta Nitoslawska, granddaughter of Polish diplomat Tadeusz Romer, Polish Ambassador in Japan 1937-1941. Romer and most of the refugees ended up in the stateless Shanghai Ghetto until Romer was included in the 1942 prisoner exchange off Africa via MS Gripsholm. He and most of his descendants ended up in Canada. Several others who attended the talk were descendants of the refugees.

Another diplomat who facilitated the exodus of so many Jewish refugees through the USSR to Japan was the Dutch consul in Lithuania, Jan Zwartendijk, who was director of the Philips factories there. Sugihara granted transit visas via Japan, while Zwartendijk granted official permission for the refugees to settle in Curaçao and the Dutch West Indies, if they should ever manage to get there.

One facet of Sugihara that I had not been aware of was his role as a spy for Japan, cooperating with Poland, sharing military intelligence among other areas. There was no Japanese community in Kaunas, where he served as consul. Japan and Poland both feared the USSR, and Japan was eager for evidence that the USSR might transfer troops west to fight the Germans, allowing Japan to transfer some of its troops from Manchuria to the South Pacific. Japan had helped earlier Poles exiled to Siberia and hosted a sizable number of Polish exiles in Karafuto (southern Sakhalin). Even though Poland declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor, Poles and Japanese continued to cooperate.

In the summer of 2011, we visited the Sugihara Port of Humanity Museum in Tsuruga, Japan, and in the spring of 2025 we visited the Shanghai Ghetto Museum in China. I’m not sure we’ll get a chance to visit the Sugihara House Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania.

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Filed under Germany, Japan, migration, nationalism, Netherlands, Poland, religion, USSR, war

by | 10 February 2026 · 6:12 am

Reading Być Jak Polak

From Być Jak Polak & Nie o takim życiu marzyłam: 2 Engaging Stories in Simplified Polish for Polish Language Learners (Polski Daily Stories), by Paulina Lipiec. The italicized items in the following excerpt are helpfully footnoted and translated in the original text. This story is pitched at people whose Polish reading is in the range of A2 and B1 (high beginner and low intermediate). I find I can read it a page or so at a time if I add my own lookups. It’s not at frustration level, and it gives me more practice with past tense forms. I’ve finished all 30 sections of DuoLingo and now just get a round of review exercises each day.

Dopiero kiedy był studentem, poznał Kasię. Kasia studiowała razem z nim historię.
Only when he was a student, he met Kasia. Kasia studied history together with him.

Jej rodzina pochodziła z Polski, więć Kasia doskonale mówiła po polsku.
Her family came from Poland, so Kasia spoke Polish perfectly.

Pewnego dnia Kasia zaprosiła Jasona do swojego domu.
On a certain day, Kasia invited Jason to her house.

Następnego dnia mieli mieć ważny egzamin i chcieli się razem uczyć.
The next day they were to have an important exam and wanted to study together.

Kiedy Jason wszedł do mieszkania rodziców Kasi,
When Jason entered Kasia’s family residence,

przypomniał mu się jego przyjaciel z dzieciństwa.
he remembered his [Polish] friend from childhood.

W tym mieszkaniu wszystko było polskie.
In this flat everything was Polish.

W przedpokoju leżały kapcie dla gości.
In the hallway lay slippers for guests.

W salonie nad kanapą wisiał obraz Matki Boskiej z Częstochowy.
In the living room above the couch hung a picture of Our Lady of Czestochowa.

W szafce za szybą stały biało-niebieskie filiżanki i czajnicek do herbaty.
Behind glass in the cupboard stood white and blue cups and a teapot for tea.

Na stole leżał biały obrus.
On the table lay a white tablecloth.

Mieszkanie pachniało makiem, bo mama Kasi właśnie piekła makowca.
The flat smelled of poppyseeds, because Kasia’s mom was baking a poppyseed cake.

Jason był zachwycony!
Jason was amazed.

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Filed under education, language, Poland

by | 7 February 2026 · 4:18 am

Displaced Poles in World War 2

My latest compilation from Culture.pl includes an article by Juliette Bretan on Polish refugees abroad during World War 2. Here are some excerpts.

Britain proved an early home for thousands of Poles following the invasion of Poland by Nazi and Soviet forces in September 1939. Polish civilians, and those in the armed forces, fled over the Carpathian mountains to Romania and Hungary, with around 90,000 military personnel known to have escaped by the end of September. Many of those in the armed forces reached France via then Yugoslavia and Italy, where new divisions were organised.

After France fell, thousands of Poles in the armed forces, and the Polish government-in-exile, transferred to London. In August 1940, an Anglo-Polish agreement allowed for the Polish land sea and air forces to be organised and employed under British command. Polish fighter and bomber squadrons were created, with Polish pilots destroying nearly 1000 enemy aircraft and dropping nearly 15,000 bombs and mines during the course of the war.

Persia

Following the Nazi invasion of Russia 1941, a treaty – the Sikorski-Mayski agreement – was signed between Poland and the Soviet Union, which included an ‘amnesty’ allowing for the release of many of the Poles who had been deported east. However, many Poles in labour camps were unaware of the development, and even those who were had only limited assistance from the Soviet authorities. Thousands of Poles, however, did manage to move south, joining Władysław Anders’s army as they moved through Russia and central Asia. In 1942, General Sikorski received permission to evacuate Poles into Persia (now Iran), across the Caspian Sea.

Africa

As Zdzisława Wójcik notes, more than half of the 37,000 Polish civilians who left the USSR with the Polish army found new homes in Africa, in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa. Some arrived by sea between 1942-43, and were housed in former POW camps or new settlements, whilst others were transported from refugee camps across the world:

The settlements […] operated their own businesses: farms, canteens, butcher shops, bakeries, and fabric–weaving, sewing and shoemaking shops […] the population in the Polish settlements had a specific demographic profile: about 47 percent were women, over 41.5 percent were teenagers and children, and only 11.5 percent were men. (Wójcik, in The Polish Deportees of World War II)

According to Wójcik, the Catholic Church played a prominent role in structuring Polish communities in Africa, although the number of priests varied by settlement. Support for the refugees was also provided by the Polish Red Cross and bureaus in Nairobi, with schools and orphanages established for children. However, the food available in these orphanages often left much to be desired, as Vala Lewicki – who was based in Uganda – remembers:

Meals were never elaborate affairs. The quick breakfast varied only between a plate of baked beans and a slice of bread with tea and coffee one day, and two slices of sparingly-buttered bread with cocoa or tea the next day. Occasionally we had powdered eggs which tasted like…powder. We had sandwiches for lunch, while dinner consisted of bean soup, a slice of meat and baked beans. Always baked beans! (Vala Lewicki, in The Polish Deportees of World War II)

New Zealand & Mexico

Just under 1000 Poles – 733 children and 105 adults – also found a new home in New Zealand during the war, after Prime Minister of the country accepted the refugees.

Arriving in Wellington in 1944, the refugees were settled in a Polish Children’s Camp in the town of Pahiatua, where Catholic services and Polish schooling and scouting trips were provided. Many of the Polish refugees also chose to settle in New Zealand after the war, finding ample opportunities for work as mining and logging industries expanded.

Meanwhile, a community of 1400 Poles also settled in Santa Rosa in Mexico, where they were welcomed by an orchestra playing the Polish national anthem. The settlement in Santa Rosa included living quarters and a school, where a Polish curriculum was used, as well as gardens and playing areas.

India

It is estimated that around 5000 Poles also found safe haven in India, after the wife of the Polish Consul General to Bombay, Kira Banasińska, petitioned the Maharaja of Nawanagar. The Maharaja had longstanding links to Poland – his father had been friends with pianist Ignacy Paderewski – and said that he was ‘trying to do whatever [he] can to save the children.’

Refugees settled in several camps in and around Bombay, as well as in a settlement built at the Maharaja’s summer palace. Polish culture remained an integral part of life, with Catholic teaching organised, Polish books provided, and the children also encouraged to give performances featuring traditional Polish dances and music. Sport was also encouraged: following the arrival of pre-war Lvovian footballer Antoni Maniak, a stadium and running track was built, and regular training sessions established to improve the children’s health and wellbeing. The Maharaja donated money to purchase sporting equipment – and the children proved themselves worthy foes against local teams.

The refugees dubbed the settlement camps ‘Little Poland’.

The Polish Red Cross supported the orphans who were being settled in India, although Ordonówna accompanied the first transport of children out of the Middle East, despite battling the symptoms of tuberculosis, which would later kill her.

Post-war resettlement

At the end of the war, many Poles were unable to return to their homeland. The British government recognised the contribution of Poles in the Allied forces, and established the Polish Resettlement Act, the first mass immigration legislation, in 1947, which offered British citizenship and support for hundreds of thousands of Poles. Following the act, transports were provided to enable their relatives to also reach the UK. Four thousand Poles arrived in overland transports from Italy by rail, whilst several ships carrying hundreds of displaced Poles arrived in ports in Southampton, Liverpool, Hull, London and Glasgow in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This included a transport of 66 Poles from Santa Rosa in Mexico, who travelled aboard the Empire Windrush in its historic passage to London in 1948; around 400 Poles – including many orphans – from Kilindini Mombasa in Kenya on the SS Scythia, which docked in Liverpool; and 600 displaced women, children and elderly Poles from Cape Town on the RMS Arundel Castle, which arrived in Southampton.

On board one transport from Lebanon in 1950, on the SS Oxfordshire, were also several unexpected passengers – two hives of bees, brought by one man in his 60s. The man was allowed to keep the bees, which he took to Haydon Park resettlement camp. By the early 1950s, over 100,000 Poles were registered in Great Britain. Among them were pre-war cultural figures, including Polish poet and songwriter Marian Hemar, and singers Adam Aston, Zofia Terné and Włada Majewska; as well as artists, including the Themersons and Stanisław Frenkiel. Many of these figures played a significant role in forming Polish communities in the UK post-war.

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Filed under Britain, France, Germany, India, Iran, Kenya, Mediterranean, migration, military, nationalism, Poland, South Africa, USSR, war