The Memorial Pillar located in Valivade (a village near Kolhapur, India) is in memory of over 5000 Polish refugees who escaped to India during World War II and were given shelter in the area. Poland's Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz unveiled the pillar on 14 September 2019. [1] [2] [3]
The first group of refugees had arrived in Valivade on 11 June 1943 and stayed till 1948. Whereas in 1948, many Poles returned to their homeland, a few stayed back. [4] Valivade was the largest settlement of Polish citizens In India during the war. [5] [6] [7] There were other smaller Polish settlements in India at the time in areas such as Balachadi and Panchgani which offered settlement mainly due to the hospitality of Maharaja of Kolhapur and Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji, Maharaja Jam Sahib of Nawanagar State. [8] [9] A Polish cemetery is also in Vilavade, home to 78 people who died there. [1]
Starachowice is a city in southeastern Poland, with 49,513 inhabitants (31.12.2017). It is the capital of Starachowice County in the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship. It is situated upon the River Kamienna, a tributary of the Vistula River, among hills and forests.
Grajewo is a town in north-eastern Poland with 21,499 inhabitants (2016). It is the capital of Grajewo County within the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is located within the historic region of Masovia, near the border with Podlachia and Masuria.
The Polish diaspora comprises Poles and people of Polish heritage or origin who live outside Poland. The Polish diaspora is also known in modern Polish as Polonia, the name for Poland in Latin and many Romance languages.
Legnickie Pole is a village in Legnica County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. It is the seat of the administrative district (gmina) called Gmina Legnickie Pole.
Shahu of the Bhonsle dynasty of Marathas was a Raja and the first Maharaja (1900–1922) of the Indian princely state of Kolhapur. Rajarshi Shahu was considered a true democrat and social reformer. Shahu Maharaj was an able ruler who was associated with many progressive policies during his rule. From his coronation in 1894 till his demise in 1922, he worked for the cause of the lower caste subjects in his state. Primary education to all regardless of caste and creed was one of his most significant priorities.
Crimes against the Polish nation committed by Nazi Germany and Axis collaborationist forces during the invasion of Poland, along with auxiliary battalions during the subsequent occupation of Poland in World War II, included the genocide of millions of Polish people, especially the systematic extermination of Jewish Poles. These mass killings were enacted by the Nazis with further plans that were justified by their racial theories, which regarded Poles and other Slavs, and especially Jews, as racially inferior Untermenschen.
Wojtek was a Syrian brown bear adopted by soldiers of the Polish II Corps during World War II. As a young cub, his mother was shot by hunters, and he was found in the mountains of Iran by a young boy. The boy then sold him to a group of Polish soldiers who were in the country after being evacuated from the Soviet Union. In order to provide for his rations and transportation, he was eventually enlisted officially as a soldier with the rank of private, and was subsequently promoted to corporal.
The Polish Air Force Memorial is a war memorial in West London, England in memory of airmen from Poland who served in the Royal Air Force as part of the Polish contribution to World War II. Over 18,000 men and women served in the Polish squadrons of the RAF during the war, and over 2,000 died. The memorial marks the southern extremity of South Ruislip in the London Borough of Hillingdon, near RAF Northolt, where seven Polish-manned fighter squadrons were based at different times in the war.
Anti-Jewish violence in Poland from 1944 to 1946 preceded and followed the end of World War II in Europe and influenced the postwar history of the Jews and Polish-Jewish relations. It occurred amid a period of violence and anarchy across the country caused by lawlessness and anti-communist resistance against the Soviet-backed communist takeover of Poland. The estimated number of Jewish victims varies, ranging up to 2,000. In 2021, Julian Kwiek published the first scientific register of incidents and victims of anti-Jewish violence in Poland from 1944 to 1947; according to Kwiek's calculations, the number of victims was 1,074 to 1,121. Jews constituted between two and three percent of the total number of victims of postwar violence in the country, including Polish Jews who managed to escape the Holocaust in territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, and returned after the border changes imposed by the Allies at the Yalta Conference. Incidents ranged from individual attacks to pogroms.
Sir Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja, known to some as the Good Maharaja, was the Maharaja Jam Sahib of Nawanagar from 1933 to 1966, succeeding his uncle, the famed cricketer Ranjitsinhji.
Polish–Romanian relations are foreign relations between Poland and Romania.
Indo-Polish relations are the bilateral relations between the Republic of Poland and the Republic of India. Historically, relations have generally been friendly, characterised by understanding and cooperation on an international front.
Polish Jews were the primary victims of the Nazi Germany-organized Holocaust in Poland. Throughout the German occupation of Poland, Jews were rescued from the Holocaust by Polish people, at risk to their lives and the lives of their families. According to Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, Poles were, by nationality, the most numerous persons identified as rescuing Jews during the Holocaust. By January 2022, 7,232 people in Poland have been recognized by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations.
Following the Soviet invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II, in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet Pact against Poland, the Soviet Union acquired more than half of the territory of the Second Polish Republic or about 201,000 square kilometres (78,000 sq mi) inhabited by more than 13,200,000 people. Within months, in order to de-Polonize annexed lands, the Soviet NKVD rounded up and deported between 320,000 and 1 million Polish nationals to the eastern parts of the USSR, the Urals, and Siberia. There were four waves of deportations of entire families with children, women, and elderly people aboard freight trains from 1940 until 1941. The second wave of deportations by the Soviet occupational forces across the Kresy macroregion, affected 300,000 to 330,000 Poles, sent primarily to Kazakhstan.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Wrocław, Poland.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Łódź, Poland.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Białystok, Poland.
Balachadi is a village in Jodiya Taluka of Jamnagar district, Gujarat, India. It is 25 kilometres east of Jamnagar, near the Gulf of Kutch.
Kira Banasińska (1899-2002) was the wife of Eugeniusz Banasiński, the first Polish Consul-General of Poland in Bombay. She was a representative of the Polish Red Cross in India. Kira cared for and helped in rehabilitating the lives of several thousand Polish children, women and old people who were refugees from Russia, who were accommodated during World War II with local help in India.