Poland in Pictures (Visual Geography. Second Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought "Poland In Pictures" to put away until I have a grandchild. My son-in-law was born and raised in Poland, and this book will bring his home to his future children in the U.S. Until there is a child to look at it, my daughter will enjoy, just as well.
The book gives a comprehensive overview of the geography and history of Poland, illustrated beautifully, liberally depicting the gorgeous castles and cathedrals that make you want to visit the country.

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Destroy Warsaw: Hitler's Punishment, Stalin's Revenge Review

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(More customer reviews)One especially valuable aspect of this book is its detailed introduction to the beginnings of the Polish Underground. Concrete strategy was planned even before the German guns of 1939 had fallen silent.
During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, even Polish firemen tried to help the doomed Jews: "The flames leaped high above the twelve-foot wall covered with broken glass, and firemen in gleaming helmets were called to the scene. But when they aimed their hoses at the burning buildings across the wall, an SS officer waving a pistol shouted at them to stop wasting water. They were there not to extinguish the burning Jewish part of the city but to prevent the flames from spreading to the `Aryan' side of Warsaw. Nearby factories produced uniforms and spare parts for German army vehicles. The firemen stood there, useless and helpless, together with a crowd of silent Polish onlookers, numb with horror and fear. Several women wept. Then Lithuanian police in black uniforms arrived and told the crowd to move on." (p. 55). Borowiec's testimony, an eyewitness one (p. 66), adds refutation to the oft-repeated Polonophobic innuendo of Poles cheering the burning of the Jews.
Borowiec was 14 years old at the time of the Warsaw Uprising. He writes much about the first days of the Uprising and the premature shootouts that occurred prior to 5 PM, August 1. This made it virtually impossible to coordinate the first planned actions of the Uprising, and it ruined whatever chances the Poles had of taking the Germans by surprise at their strongly-defended positions (bridges, etc.). The Poles' arms had been depleted by the actions of "Operation Tempest" further east. German armored units played a major role in stifling the Uprising in certain parts of Warsaw in its first days (p. 94)
As if writing a rebuke to those who labeled the Uprising a folly, Borowiec quotes from an Underground newspaper: "There are no regrets and no fear. And we are determined to die in the Polish Thermopylae, in the ruins of our city, rather than abandon the independent life and the values gained in the general enthusiasm." (p. 181)
Some 40,000 Varsovians were taken to concentration camps (p. 177), in violation of the capitulation agreement. The Germans removed 33,000 railway wagons of loot before burning Warsaw's remaining buildings (p. 178). The AK continued to fight the Germans after the Uprising before being disbanded on January 19, 1945 (p. 181).


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Written by a survivor of the Warsaw Uprising, this book examines the background of the ill-fated 63-day uprising that pitted poorly armed Polish civilians and volunteers against Hitler's well-armed and veteran forces.

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The History of Poland (The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations) Review

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(More customer reviews)It was both a privilege and a pleasure for me to read Biskupski's veritable novella on the History of Poland. It is immediately striking for what it is not: large. For better or worse the present day reader does not have the inclination to wade through the large "History of..." Some authors have attempted the shorter history only to find they have cut the heart out of the subject and left the reader with nothing more than an inarticulate smattering of the highlights and lowlights; ringing the dinnerbell for hungry folks only to serve cheese and crackers. Biskupski's History of Poland is not such an attempt. Instead, what the reader gets is a glimpse at Biskupski's innate ability to convey a complicated idea with only a few sentences: "A belief in historical inevitability is little more than lack of imagination masquerading as analytical sophistication. What happened will always be predetermined." - M.B. Biskupski, pg. 94 The majority of the work displays a rapier-like wit and a personal charm in the text that makes the experience more like a mental dialogue than a "boring" textbook experience. Interestingly, Chapter 8, "Communism in Poland" does not fit this description. Instead, Chapter 8 has a cathartic feel to it. I will not elaborate further for one should come to his own conclusions on Chapter 8 and mine, perhaps, are wrong-headed. What the reader has in Biskupski's History of Poland is a complex history thoughtfully written.

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A Concise History of Poland (Cambridge Concise Histories) Review

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(More customer reviews)If you have no knowledge of Polish history, this book is a good place the start. The authors recommend Playground of the Gods if you are looking for a more detailed history of Poland, but I haven't read those yet so I can't "offically" recommend them.
This book covers basic events and ideas that occured in Poland for the past 1000 years. In addition to politics and military events, the authors attempt to list cultural figures, such as Chopin, and how those figures reflected or affected Polish events.
There were few details on events most people normally think about when they think of Poland, such as concentration camps and WWII. However, these issues aren't ignored entirely, just given the same coverage as other events in Polish history.

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The second edition of this guide to Poland has been updated to take account of the years from 1989-2005. This period marked its liberation from the Soviet Union, the birth of Poland's 'Third Republic' and, recently, its accession to the European Union in 2004. Poland's history has been marked by its resilience. Once a dominant force in central and eastern Europe and home to a remarkable experiment in consensual politics, it was excised from the map by its neighbours in 1795. Resurrected in 1918, partitioned afresh during the Second World War, it survived to become a satellite of the Soviet Union. Yet in the 1980s, it was Poland which blazed the trail in casting off communism, and was finally able to reassert its Christian heritage. With its updated bibliography and new chronology, the book is the ideal companion for all looking for a comprehensive survey of this fascinating country.

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Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939-1944 Review

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(More customer reviews)This second edition of the book contains new chapters. One of them contains a list of Polish gentiles, murdered by the German occupants, while attempting to assist Jews (Poland was one of the only countries where the death penalty was handed out by the Nazis to anyone who gave the slightest assistance to the Jews). Of course, this list is but a drop in the bucket: The actual number of Polish gentiles strongly assisting Polish Jews, but caught and slain by the Germans for helping Jews, is estimated to be as high as 50,000.
The second new chapter is a discussion of Zegota: A clandestine Polish underground organization for assisting Jews. At its height, it consisted of tens of thousands of Polish gentiles in German-occupied Warsaw alone--all working under the threat of death if caught.
Lukas also discusses Polish collaboration with the Nazis, but shows that, contrary to much popular Holocaust material, this level of collaboration was much smaller than those of most other German-occupied European nations, and was also dwarfed by the number of Poles who assisted the Jews.
Earlier, Lukas documents how 3 million Polish gentiles were murdered by the Germans during World War II. This is very rarely mentioned in most Holocaust materials. Also included is discussion of the cultural genocide of Poland: the systematic, barbaric German practice of systematically destroying visible traces of Polish culture (monuments, libraries, museums, etc.). If you are one raised on the belief that only Jews suffered in the hands of the Nazis, you are in for a shock when you read this excellent book.

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