“It was a merciless time”. The End of the War in Austria 1945
Barbara Stelzl-Marx: 8 May 1945 is rightly regarded as a turning point in history—similar to the end of the First World War, the “Anschluss” of Austria in March 1938, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Abduction of Czechoslovaks from Czechoslovakia to the USSR after 1945
Jan Dvořák: However, the restored Czechoslovakia, whose territory was not fully liberated by the Allies until early May, was no longer the sovereign state it had been before the WWII.
The Red Army in Romania – from enemy to friend and back
Cosmin Budeancă: On 6 September 1940, King Carol II of Romania was forced to abdicate and flee the country. On the same day, at the age of just 18 years, his son Michael I ascended to the throne, with, however, little authority beyond the prerogatives of being supreme commander of the army and naming a prime minister with full powers, named “conductor”.
Siberia Through the Eyes of Polish Jews
Martyna Rusiniak-Karwat: According to NKVD sources, the Jews deported deep into the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940 accounted for more than 84% of all those deported at that time. They were placed in 251 special settlements within the Soviet Union.
The first Polish exiles in Sybir
Bartłomiej Garczyk: In the 1660s, during the Polish-Moscow wars, groups of Poles defending the cities and fortresses of Smolensk and Severow were imprisoned and taken deep into the Muscovite state and incorporated into the crews of the fortresses there.
Leon Barszczewski’s (1849–1910) expeditions through the former Emirate of Bukhara
Igor Strojecki: The collection of photographs that Leon Barszczewski took between 1885 and 1909 is unique, and perhaps the only one of its kind in this part of Europe.
‘On this “rock” I will build my city’ – remarkable cases of Jan Koziełł-Poklewski
Jerzy Rohoziński: Colonel Jan Koziełł-Poklewski, pseud. ‘Jakub the Rock” (pol.: ‘Jakub Skała’) or ‘Hlebowicz’, war chief of the Augustów and Grodno Voivodeships, commander of III Insurgent Army Corps, commander of Warsaw in the January Uprising. In 1872, he returned to the Kingdom of Poland from France, where he had fled after the Uprising. Contrary to the promises of the Russians, he was arrested and deported to Russian Turkestan.
In the heart of the continent. Soviet deportations in 1945.
Dariusz Węgrzyn: Polish territory was a key theatre of warfare for the Soviets. Advancing westwards, they headed straight for Berlin. To ensure calm in the rear of the fighting armies, the Soviets conducted an operation to detain and then deport to the Soviet Union those who might pose a threat to the Red Army. At the same time, their political opponents were deported to gulags in aid of the new Moscow-dependent communist authorities.
From the labour camp to Kultura (the case of Herling-Grudziński)
Włodzimierz Bolecki: ‘As a writer, I was born in a labour camp,’ Gustaw Herling-Grudziński said many times. This approach remains valid today and is reflected in the writer’s path to becoming an editor at Kultura.