Janusz Korczak – pseudonym of Henryk Goldszmit. Pedagogue, physician, writer, publicist. He grew up in an assimilated, wealthy Jewish family from Warsaw.read more »

Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko (1947 – 1984) was a Polish Roman Catholic priest, strongly involved in the opposition movement under the communist regime. He was murdered by agents of the Polish internal intelligence agency. Recognized as a martyr by the Catholic Church, he was beatified on June 6, 2010.read more »

Noam Chomsky (born 7 Dec. 1928) – probably the most influencial living linguist, founder of Generative Grammar, professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and controversial political writer – celebrates his 81th birthday today.read more »

Claude Lévi-Strauss, anthropology giant who transformed Western understanding of what was once called “primitive man,” and who towered over the European intellectual scene in the 1960s and 1970s, died last Sunday, less than a month ahead of his 101th birthday.read more »

The Daily Telegraph

Marek Edelman, Jewish Combat Organization commander during WWII, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943), Warsaw Uprising (1944) veteran, post-war anti-communist opposition activist, and eminent cardiologist died 2 Oct. 2009 in Warsaw. The Daily Telegraph has posted an obituary of the unusual man.read more »

Małgorzata Pasicka (ed.)

John Calvin (Jean Calvin) was born on 10 July 1509 in France. Twenty five years Luther’s junior, he initiated a more strict branch of Protestantism, which – with certain modifications, especially regarding the doctrine of predestination – is still cultivated in Presbyterian and other Reformed churches. He spent many years in Geneva, which he aimed to transform into a theocratic “Christian republic.” He put forward his doctrine in Institutio Religionis Christianae, which remains a Reneissance masterpiece.read more »

"Islam is a religion of tolerance. The prophet Mohammed never in his life spilled the blood of a poet" – says Jordanian poet Islam Samhan, accused of insulting the Prophet and the religion. The poet’s name, ironically, translates: "tolerant Islam".read more »

Two universties in Israel have recently honoured the extraordinary priest by awarding him honorary doctorates. The occurence provides a perfect opportunity to remember his contribution to uncovering the so far hardly known horrors of the Holocaust in the Ukraine...read more »

Last week’s launch of the film The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler provides a good opportunity to remember its heroine – the brave Polish social worker who helped save the lives of 2,500 Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. As a Catholic, she could not move around the walled-off Jewish ghetto legally. She therefore used fake identification to pass herself off as a nurse and smuggle children to safety...read more »

Eli Ashkenazi, Haaretz magazine correspondent

Between medical treatments for cancer, Jorek Plonski, 83, used to travel from his home on Kibbutz Megiddo in the north to Givat Haviva, between Haifa and Tel Aviv, to help create a museum commemorating typical Polish towns before the Holocaust and tell young people about his time in the Warsaw Ghetto and his experiences as one of a group of Jewish children who sold cigarettes in the city’s Three Crosses Square.read more »

On March 23 the Polish president Lech Kaczyński honoured posthumously the Hungarian hero for his outstanding efforts to protect Jews and help Polish soldiers during World War II. His daughter received the Polonia Restituta award on his behalf. read more »

Fr Stanisław Musiał SJ (May 22, 1938 – March 5, 2004) was a pioneer and eminent leader of Catholic-Jewish dialogue and Polish-Jewish reconciliation. An international conference commemorating Fr Musial and his great works was held in Krakow last week, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of his death. read more »

Sonja Nahrstedt

Two men from two opposite social backgrounds are teaching people in Israel about the history of the other side… Shoah and Nakba.read more »

Corky Siemaszko, New York Daily News

Edward Pieniak, a Polish immigrant who moved to Brooklyn four years ago, knows the odds are long, but he hopes Daily News can help track down the girl his family saved from Nazis during the Holocaust. Under the name Teresa Wisniewska this woman was hidden from the Germans during World War II by the Pieniak family.read more »

Sonja Nahrstedt

Maria Orwid, Holocaust survivor and guardian of the Holocaust memory, outstanding psychatry professor at the Jagiellionian University in Krakow, died on Feb. 9 in Krakow.read more »

Małgorzata Pasicka

On February 3 the whole musical world celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest Romantic composers. Descendant of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn was born to a noble Jewish family, which later converted to Christianity. After a period of denigration, partly due to anti-Semitism at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, his work now enjoys renaissance. read more »

Ruth Ellen Gruber

Henryk Halkowski, who died suddenly on New Year's Day in his native Krakow, Poland, may have been one of the least mystical people I ever knew, but in many ways he embodied a concept of “dos pintele Yid” – recollection by Ruth Ellen Gruber. read more »

Malgorzata Pasicka

"When Jerzy Turowicz died of a heart attack at age eighty-six on January 27, Poland lost a great and wise man. But to say only this fails to take his true measure, since for decades his salutary influence extended far beyond his native country" – wrote former Commonweal editor James Finn in an obituary written immeniately upon the death of Tygodnik Powszechny legendary editor-in-chief. It has been exactly 10 years now since the great man passed away... read more »

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, influential American intellectual and Catholic theologian, Lutheran minister for over 30 years, collaborator of pastor Martin Luther King, supporter of Pope John Paul II, founder of a high brow religious journal First Things, mighty advocate for ecumenism, died Jan. 8 from cancer side effects. read more »

www.diapozytyw.pl

Emmanuel Ringelblum (1900-1944) Historian, teacher and community activist born in Buczacz. Ringelblum studied at the University of Warsaw, where he also received his doctorate.read more »

Laurence Rees, BBC History on-line

Auschwitz is a place of unparalleled horror and the site of the largest mass murder in history. Laurence Rees looks inside the mind of the man who built and ran the camp – you can read on the BBC History website.read more »

Zbigniew Basara, Gazeta Wyborcza

Broadway will see the premiere today of a play about the extraordinary life of Irena Gut-Opdyke – a Polish woman who saved 12 Jews. It's the first ever Broadway show about Poles savings Jews during the Holocaust.read more »

Heather Sharp, BBC

As Israel released nearly 200 Palestinian prisoners, the BBC's correspondent in Jerusalem looks at some of the personal stories behind prisoner swaps and releases involving Israel, the Palestinian Authority and militant groups.read more »

Professor Bronisław Geremek, born on March 6, 1932 in Warsaw, was a Polish social historian and politician. He died when the car he was driving hit an oncoming vehicle in western Poland on Sunday afternoon, when his Mercedes car collided with a van near the western town of Lubien. read more »

European Jewish Press

Jozef Szajna, who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp and became an acclaimed painter, theatre director, playwright and professor died Tuesday aged 86, the Warsaw Academy of Arts said.read more »

Wikipedia

Henryk Mandelbaum, born in 1922 in Olkusz died June 17, 2008 in Bytom, was a survivor of the Holocaust. He was one of the prisoners in the Sonderkommando KZ Auschwitz-Birkenau in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp who had to work in the crematory. read more »

Israel Gutman interviewed by Piotr Zychowicz

Irena Sendlerowa was quite possibly the most courageous of Polish women, the brave women of the intelligentsia who put their hearts entirely into helping Jews. In an interview with Piotr Zychowicz, Israel Gutman, a historian at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem, said, “This was humanism in its purest form.”read more »

Interview with Bronisław Stupka.

My parents were very active in helping prisoners. First, they made contact with the engineers who came into Oświęcim to do surveying work around the site of the camp. read more »

Waldemar Piasecki

The Society of Jan Karski asked Bronisław Komorowski, the Marshal of the Polish Sejm to make 2008 the year of Jan Karski.read more »

www.diapozytyw.pl

The initiator and moving force behind Polish-German reconciliation, also dedicated to Polish-Jewish dialogue. Historian, publicist and politician. read more »