Discovering Roots in Poland Genealogy research and heritage tours

30/05/2024

Today catholic church celebrates Corpus Christi.

27/04/2024

POLAND HAS BUILT A NEW CASTLE 😍
Everything you see is completely new. The castle, or rather a residential building imitating a castle, was finished in 2023 in the polish village of Stobnica. It looks to be standing on an island, but in fact the castle is an island in itself. The castle is more than 70 metres high and about 200 metres long. Each of the 15 floors is equal to two standard floors in a typical residential building. The target is to house 46 units, which can accommodate almost a hundred people.

The architect of the project is Waldemar Szeszuła and he says that the whole establishment is meant to feel lika a historic town with streets, courtyards and alleys. According to him, the project was “difficult and demanding”. It took a total of five years to develop, and at times some 30 designers were involved. “The design did not contain any repetitive elements. It is difficult to compare it with contemporary standard designs for residential, office and other buildings. It contains a lot of detailed detailing, much of it based on stonework, requiring detailed drawings. All this to result in an object that imitates or is a form of a real medieval castle as closely as possible.”

(The project is being built in a Natura 2000 area, on the edge of what is known as the Notecka Forest. This has received a lot of criticism, but here we only discuss the architecture)

Beauty matters!

25/04/2024

Today, Urszula Tauer, codenamed "Ala", celebrates her 103rd birthday. She was a liaison officer during the Warsaw Uprising.
Her mother was Polish, and her father was German. As she emphasises, even as a child, she chose Polish identity and patriotism and remained faithful.
"If I had to fight for my homeland today, I would be the first to join the ranks," she says.
As a liaison officer and courier, she travelled to Berlin and to scattered prisoner-of-war and forced labour camps throughout Germany. She led an Armia Krajowa (Home Army) unit, preparing false documents for couriers. In the Warsaw Uprising, she was shot in her leg on 2nd August but returned to the fight.
Happy Birthday!

Photo by Filip Kowalkowski.

24/04/2024

Two young Polish peasant women ready to leave Ellis Island, 1910.

31/03/2024

Snutka Golińska autorstwa Pauliny Półrolniczak

15/03/2024

Zofia Pilecka, the daughter of Witold Pilecki, the only man who volunteered for the German Death Camp in Auschwitz, turns 91 today.
Happy Birthday!
Unfortunately, the location of the body of this Polish hero, murdered by the communists, remains unknown.

09/03/2024

I just finished an amazing few days in Warsaw Poland A beautiful country with a very inspirational story

05/02/2024

A female Polish agent hired by the Germans who help to identify the “Butcher of Warsaw”.

➡In conjunction with yesterday's 80th anniversary of the successful ex*****on of Franz Kutschera, we would like to introduce you to Teodora Żukowska. Without her help, one of the greatest Polish WW2 underground operations would not have happened.

➡She was pretty, she spoke fluently German and she had a multinational heritage, including. Austrian and German. She was a perfect candidate for a secretary at the German administration centre in occupied Warsaw.

➡In the fall of 1939, soon after she was expelled from her home in Warsaw taken over by the Germans, Teodora Żukowska (real name Theodora-Flavia Matugenta Edle von Seracsin-Żukowska) agreed to work for the Germans.

➡The man who let the future agent right into the heart of the German administration in Warsaw was SS-Sturmbannführer Ernst Kah, the SD Head in the Warsaw District of the General Government. He was really impressed by her knowledge of German, her looks and her demeanour. What he probably didn’t know was that Teodora already knew people involved with the Polish resistance.

➡Even though in her veins ran the Czech, Austrian, German, Romanian and Polish blood, she remained faithful to Poland. A country she had been living in since 1926 and where she married a Pole.

➡Żukowska started to work in the Brühl Palace, Warsaw, which was turned into the headquarters of Ludwig Fischer, Governor of the Warsaw District within the General Government.

➡Until the summer of 1944, she provided valuable intel data to the Polish resistance. One of the most important was the identification of SS-Brigadeführer Franz Kutschera, since September 1943 the head of the SS and Police of the Warsaw District.

➡Kutschera, nicknamed the “Butcher of Warsaw” introduced terror and public ex*****ons on a large scale during the fall of 1943 and the winter of 1943/1944. The identity of Kutschera wasn’t known to the public as he didn’t sign the announcement posters about the ex*****ons of hostages, a common sight in occupied Warsaw. Thanks to Żukowska, the Home Army obtained valuable info about Kutschera. His address, the car he drove and his description.

➡On 1 February 1944, Franz Kutschera was executed by the Home Army. No one could expect that a high-ranking SS official could be killed in broad daylight, right in the centre of the “Police district” in Warsaw.

➡Before the Warsaw Uprising broke out, Żukowska in agreement with her Home Army superiors left the occupied Poland and began to work in Austria. In 1945 she moved to Italy and joined the Polish II Corps commanded by Gen. Anders.

➡She finally settled in Poland in 1947. She was persecuted by the communists who accused her of cooperating with the Gestapo. She spent years in prison and was finally released in 1953. Teodora Żukowska passed away in 1993.

03/01/2024

Over 300 000 scans was published on the Polish National Archives Website. Which makes researching so much easier👍👍👍

19/12/2023

14/12/2023

06/12/2023

Happy St. Nicholas day from Poznań town hall goats❤️

Małym i dużym miłośnikom świętego Mikołaja przekazujemy najlepsze życzenia od poznańskich koziołków.

Koziołki przyodziane w mikołajkowe czapki i kubraczki od 6 grudnia do 6 stycznia wprowadzać będą Państwa w świąteczny nastrój.

🎁🎄❄️

Fot. Henryk Sieg

[Na zdjęciu znajdują się ratuszowe koziołki ubrane w czerwone czapki i kubraczki. Widoczne są od tyłu.]

10/11/2023

To find ones ancestor sometimes needs checking the nearby parishes.

Manchmal muss man die umliegenden Kirchspiele nach dem Eintrag eines Vorfahren durchsuchen. Welche das waren zeigen für 1818 sehr gut die detailreichen Karten auf https://buff.ly/3MxTnDk

06/11/2023

Not long ago Lt. John Franklin- Polish pilot celebrated his 104 birthday on November 3, 2023.

Join us to wish John HAPPY BIRTHDAY 🎂 💯🎂

He is the last living Polish airman in Great Britain to have been awarded the Cross of Valour - Polish decoration for a combat merit.

John (Polish name Mieczysław Frąckiewicz) was a Siberian exile who reached the Middle East with Anders Army.

He volunteered to serve in the Polish Air Force and arrived to Great Britain in April, 1943.
After completing training as a Wireless Operator, he was assigned to 304 (Polish) Bomber Squadron.

He made his first flight on August 21, 1944, and by the end of the war he had completed 26 missions.

On 2nd April 1945, he and his crew,
sank German submarine, U-Boot U-321.
Being 100-year-old John-Mieczysław Frąckiewicz was promoted to the rank of lieutenant & awarded the Gold Medal of Merit for National Defence.

who fought for your freedom and ours, the freedom we can enjoy now.
in

Best wishes congratulations Happy Birthday, Sir🎂🎶🎂 🍷🥂

Photo: Krystian Data

02/11/2023

Husar's gravestone located in the cemetery in Łódź Poland🇵🇱

Jeden z najpiękniejszych pomników nagrobnych w Łodzi, czyli rzeźba autorstwa Wacława Konopki na miejscu wiecznego spoczynku porucznika Stefana Pogonowskiego, dowódcy I batalionu 28. Pułku Strzelców Kaniowskich „Dzieci Łodzi”.

Stefan Pogonowski poległ w 15 sierpnia 1920 roku w bitwie pod Radzyminem, jednej z najważniejszych starć wojny polsko-bolszewickiej, która zatrzymała sowieckie natarcie w kierunku Warszawy

📍 Cmentarz Stary, cz. katolicka
📸 Łukasz Klimczak

02/11/2023

31/10/2023

Happy Halloween🎃🎃🎃

Polish cake-design masters Angelika Chwyć and Renata Martyna were crowned at the special edition of the Cake Designers World Championship held in Milan.

They defeated teams from Italy (2nd place), Belgium (3rd place), China, USA, Mexico, Japan - and many others. It is also worth mentioning that through their success Chwyć and Martyna kept the title in Poland - as the previous edition of the contest held in 2019 was won by another Pole, Jowita Woszczyńska.

More at https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7789/Artykul/3270389,poles-win-the-cake-designing-world-championship-2nd-time-in-a-row

30/08/2023

Henryk Zygalski Polish cryptologist who broke Enigma code!

Henryk Zygalski, Polish cryptologist and the creator of the “Zygalski sheets” cryptologic technique, passed away in the UK in 1978. Together with Marian Rejewski and Jerzy Różycki, they cracked the German Enigma code.
Their contribution is still underrated. It was estimated that Poland's input in breaking the Enigma code helped shorten WW2 by approx. 2 years and saved millions of lives.

15/08/2023

On August 15-th Poland celebrates Polish Army Day connected with the anniversary of the Battle of Warsaw in 1920. This battle was considered a breakthrough battle – it decided not only about Poland’s independence but it also blocked the spread of communism and Soviet totalitarianism in Europe during the 1920s. August 15-th also honors the Catholic belief that God assumed the Virgin Mary into Heaven following her death.

01/08/2023

79-th anniversary of Warsaw Uprising🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱

🇵🇱️Fotografia z Powstania Warszawskiego 1944. Śródmieście Północne. Łączniczka Bożena Grabowska "Magda" stojąca pod kamienicą przy ulicy Moniuszki 7. Na ścianie widoczne plakaty powstańcze: m. in. "Nasza droga do wolności 1939-1944", "Walczymy o Całość, Wolność, Niepodległość" oraz "Każdy pocisk, jeden Niemiec" autorstwa Henryka Chmielewskiego.
Kobieta ze zdjęcia przeżyła wojnę, zmarła w 2013 roku. Autor : Eugeniusz Lokajski "Brok". Fot. Że zbiorów Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego

04/07/2023

Happy 4-th of July🥳🥳🥳

02/07/2023

29/05/2023

Baltic mooses only in Poland🦌🦌🦌

24/04/2023

16/04/2023

06/04/2021

The history of Easter Eggs😍!

06/04/2021

Śmigus Dyngus
https://culture.pl/en/article/smigus-dyngus-polands-national-water-fight-day

A good piece of advice: beware of Easter Monday in Poland! Although this advice might seem strange, you really should take it to heart, cause otherwise… you’ll get soaked! The tradition of Śmigus-Dyngus is still going strong in Poland.