The date of 11 November 1918, being the day on which Poland regained its independence, is a symbolic date. Exactly on that day, an armistice ending the First World War was concluded in a wagon in the forest of Compiègne.
There was a time when large numbers of Poles in the Soviet Union lost their lives simply because of their origin and surname. One of the elements of the “Great Terror” unleashed by Stalin in 1937-1938 was the so-called “Polish Operation”, in which NKVD officers, on suspicion of espionage, mu
Father Jan Cieplak was auxiliary bishop of the Mogilev archdiocese, at that time the largest Roman Catholic archdiocese in the world, covering the whole of Russia up to Sakhalin.
On 31 October 1906 Marian Malinowski set off, as he himself put it, “on a journey into the unknown at government expense.”
“Poles! The hour of vengeance has come. Today die or prevail! Let us go, and let your breasts be Thermopylae for your enemies!”
Prayer of the Bar Confederates before the Battle of Lanckorona, oil painting by Artur Grottger.
