Polish Perspectives


Book Description




Polish Perspectives on Communism


Book Description

The authors in this anthology dispel the illusion that if communism failed in Russia it was due to an accident of history, having been tried in the wrong country and implemented by incompetent leaders. The evidence presented here should demonstrate that its failure was not only inevitable, but also anticipated long before it occurred.




New Perspectives on Polish Culture


Book Description

New Perspectives in Polish Culture: Personal Encounters, Public Affairs collects essays that examine the public-private dynamic as Polish culture-from the nineteenth century to the present day-interacts with the tensions, ambiguities, and idiosyncrasies of European modernity. The authors of these essays discuss Polish poetry, fiction, theatre, and literary and cultural theory. Writers and artists discussed in these essays range from Adam Mickiewicz and Joseph Conrad through Witold Gombrowicz, Miron Bialoszewski, Czeslaw Milosz, Zofia Nalkowska, and Tadeusz Kantor to Slawomir Mrożek, Tadeusz Rożewicz, the poets of bruLion, and the latest dramatists, as well as many other authors active both in Poland itself and in the Polish diaspora.




The Girl from Krakow


Book Description

It's 1935. Rita Feuerstahl comes to the university in Krakow intent on enjoying her freedom. But life has other things in store--marriage, a love affair, a child, all in the shadows of the oncoming war. When the war arrives, Rita is armed with a secret so enormous that it could cost the Allies everything, even as it gives her the will to live. She must find a way both to keep her secret and to survive amid the chaos of Europe at war. Living by her wits among the Germans as their conquests turn to defeat, she seeks a way to prevent the inevitable doom of Nazism from making her one of its last victims. Can her passion and resolve outlast the most powerful evil that Europe has ever seen? In an epic saga that spans from Paris in the '30s and Spain's Civil War to Moscow, Warsaw, and the heart of Nazi Germany, The Girl from Krakow follows one woman's battle for survival as entire nations are torn apart, never to be the same.




Treatment of Prisoners – International and Polish Perspective


Book Description

List of Abbreviations / 7 Introduction / 9 Chapter 1. Deprivation of liberty in the context of criminal justice system / 17 1.1. General remarks / 17 1.2. Deprivation of liberty – its nature and aims / 23 1.3. Classification of prisoners – consequences / 26 1.4. Basic penitentiary paradox / 29 1.5. Prison of the 21st century / 31 Chapter 2. Contemporary penitentiary standards and policy – normative aspect / 37 2.1. Treaty standards / 38 2.1.1. General treaties / 38 2.1.2. Special treaty regulations / 43 2.2. Recommended standards / 45 2.2.1. Universal level / 45 2.2.2. Regional level / 49 2.3. Domestic impact of international standards – Polish example / 53 Chapter 3. Prison population – human dimension of personal interrelations / 57 3.1. The prisoners / 57 3.2. The prison staff / 66 3.3. Interpersonal confrontations and their consequences / 71 3.3.1. Horizontal personal interrelations / 72 3.3.2. Vertical personal interrelations / 76 3.4. Examples of extreme personal interrelations (prison scandals in a nutshell) / 78 Chapter 4. Social rehabilitation of prisoners – between idea and reality / 83 4.1. An idea of “normalization”/ 83 4.2. A concept of the “implied limitations”/ 90 4.3. Main instruments of social rehabilitation / 92 4.3.1. Contacts with the outside world – possibilities / 92 4.3.2. Special offers inside the prisons / 95 4.3.2.1. Work / 95 4.3.2.2. Education / 98 4.3.2.2.1. Spiritual assistance / 99 4.3.2.2.2. Leisure time / 101 4.3.2.3. Treatment programs / 102 4.4. Preparation for release / 104 Chapter 5. Prison life and human dignity – situations of special risk / 107 5.1. Brief introductory remarks / 107 5.2. Problem of discrimination / 108 5.3. Prison order and coercion measures / 110 5.3.1. An authorized coercion actions in prison / 112 5.4. Health care “in” and “out” of prison / 118 5.5. Disciplinary procedure and sanctions / 122 Chapter 6. Control, inspections and basic procedural guaranties for prisoners / 127 6.1. Domestic level / 129 6.2. International level / 132 6.2.1. Complaint/petition procedures / 132 6.2.1.1. Council of Europe / 132 6.2.1.2. European Union / 134 6.2.1.3. United Nations Organization / 135 6.2.2. Additional monitoring procedures / 137 Final remarks / 139 Bibiography (Basic Literature) / 147 Appendices / 155




How to Feed a Dictator


Book Description

“Amazing stories . . . Intimate portraits of how [these five ruthless leaders] were at home and at the table.” —Lulu Garcia-Navarro, NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday Anthony Bourdain meets Kapuściński in this chilling look from within the kitchen at the appetites of five of the twentieth century's most infamous dictators, by the acclaimed author of Dancing Bears and What’s Cooking in the Kremlin What was Pol Pot eating while two million Cambodians were dying of hunger? Did Idi Amin really eat human flesh? And why was Fidel Castro obsessed with one particular cow? Traveling across four continents, from the ruins of Iraq to the savannahs of Kenya, Witold Szabłowski tracked down the personal chefs of five dictators known for the oppression and massacre of their own citizens—Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Uganda’s Idi Amin, Albania’s Enver Hoxha, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and Cambodia’s Pol Pot—and listened to their stories over sweet-and-sour soup, goat-meat pilaf, bottles of rum, and games of gin rummy. Dishy, deliciously readable, and dead serious, How to Feed a Dictator provides a knife’s-edge view of life under tyranny.




Polish Literature and National Identity


Book Description

A postcolonial study of Polish literature from Romanticism to the twenty-first century







A Romantic Polish-Jew


Book Description

In this book one can find historical background of Rabbi Ozjasz Thon's various interests, and it examines closely the main fields in which he was active and creative. Ozjasz Thon was a fascinating figure in the Jewish-Polish arena at the first third of the twentieth century. He was present and active in almost any field of the Jewish life in Poland in those days. He was a preacher and a rabbi, a political leader, a philosopher, a sociologist, an essayist, and a publicist.




Poland in the Twentieth Century


Book Description

Comprising mostly original essays, this book offers challenging reassessments of some of the most important and controversial themes in Polish history from 1900 until the present. In analysing Poland's triumphs and tribulations with an informed and searching eye, the author achieves a high level of intellectual coherence and nuanced historical perspectives. The overall result is a major contribution to a field of study which has gained even more significance and scholarly impetus since the collapse of Communism in Poland in 1989/90.