Providence Watching

Providence Watching PDF Author: Kazimierz Patalas
Publisher: Univ. of Manitoba Press
ISBN: 0887553591
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
At the start of the Second World War, Poland was invaded by both the German and the Soviet armies. The country was unable to withstand the assaults and thousands of Polish soldiers and civilians were shipped to labour camps and prisons, where starvation, disease, and mistreatment were their daily expectations. With the signing of an amnesty between the Polish and Soviet governments in 1942, many of these soldiers were engaged in rebuilding the Polish army, and travelled through the Mideast to fight in the Italian campaign.After the war, Canada accepted over 4000 Polish immigrant soldiers and their families who did not want to return to a communist regime in their country. This book is a moving oral history of the experiences of forty-five individuals during that transition period between the outbreak of war and their eventual relocation in Canada. Their memories of those times remain clear, not so remarkably perhaps, as they recount how they struggled in labour and prison camps, refugee camps, and exile in freezing northern climates, often arriving with the clothes they wore and nothing else. There are stories here of families torn apart and reunited, courageous escapes, underground resistance, friendship and emnity, and above all of survival. To read these memoirs is to understand how the inhumanity of war is confronted and defied by the indomitable human spirit.

Providence Watching

Providence Watching PDF Author: Kazimierz Patalas
Publisher: Univ. of Manitoba Press
ISBN: 0887553591
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
At the start of the Second World War, Poland was invaded by both the German and the Soviet armies. The country was unable to withstand the assaults and thousands of Polish soldiers and civilians were shipped to labour camps and prisons, where starvation, disease, and mistreatment were their daily expectations. With the signing of an amnesty between the Polish and Soviet governments in 1942, many of these soldiers were engaged in rebuilding the Polish army, and travelled through the Mideast to fight in the Italian campaign.After the war, Canada accepted over 4000 Polish immigrant soldiers and their families who did not want to return to a communist regime in their country. This book is a moving oral history of the experiences of forty-five individuals during that transition period between the outbreak of war and their eventual relocation in Canada. Their memories of those times remain clear, not so remarkably perhaps, as they recount how they struggled in labour and prison camps, refugee camps, and exile in freezing northern climates, often arriving with the clothes they wore and nothing else. There are stories here of families torn apart and reunited, courageous escapes, underground resistance, friendship and emnity, and above all of survival. To read these memoirs is to understand how the inhumanity of war is confronted and defied by the indomitable human spirit.

The Polish Canadians

The Polish Canadians PDF Author: William Kurelek
Publisher: Tundra Books (NY)
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description


Creating Kashubia

Creating Kashubia PDF Author: Joshua C. Blank
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773598650
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
In recent years, over one million Canadians have claimed Polish heritage - a significant population increase since the first group of Poles came from Prussian-occupied Poland and settled in Wilno, Ontario, west of Ottawa in 1858. For over a century, descendants from this community thought of themselves as Polish, but this began to change in the 1980s due to the work of a descendant priest who emphasized the community’s origins in Poland’s Kashubia region. What resulted was the reinvention of ethnicity concurrent with a similar movement in northern Poland. Creating Kashubia chronicles more than one hundred and fifty years of history, identity, and memory and challenges the historiography of migration and settlement in the region. For decades, authors from outside Wilno, as well as community insiders, have written histories without using the other’s stores of knowledge. Joshua Blank combines primary archival material and oral history with national narratives and a rich secondary literature to reimagine the period. He examines the socio-political and religious forces in Prussia, delves into the world of emigrant recruitment, and analyzes the trans-Atlantic voyage. In doing so, Blank challenges old narratives and traces the refashioning of the community’s ethnic identity from Polish to Kashubian. An illuminating study, Creating Kashubia shows how changing identities and the politics of ethnic memory are locally situated yet transnationally influenced.

Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language

Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language PDF Author: Eva Hoffman
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
The late poet and memoirist Czeslaw Milosz wrote, "I am enchanted. This book is graceful and profound." Since its publication in 1989, many other readers across the world have been enchanted by Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language, a classic of exile and immigrant literature, as well as a girl’s coming-of-age memoir. Lost in Translationmoves from Hoffman's childhood in Cracow, Poland to her adolescence in Vancouver, British Columbia to her university years in Texas and Massachusetts to New York City, where she becomes a writer and an editor at the New York Times Book Review. Its multi-layered narrative encompasses many themes: the defining power of language; the costs and benefits of changing cultures, the construction of personal identity, and the profound consequences, for a generation of post-war Jews like Hoffman, of Nazism and Communism. Lost in Translation is, as Publisher's Weekly wrote, "a penetrating, lyrical memoir that casts a wide net," challenges its reader to reconsider their own language, autobiography, cultures, and childhoods. Lost in Translation was first published in the United States in 1989. Hoffman’s subsequent books of literary non-fiction include Exit into History, Shtetl, After Such Knowledge, Time and two novels, The Secret and Appassionata. "Nothing, after all, has been lost; poetry this time has been made in and by translation." — Peter Conrad, The New York Times "Handsomely written and judiciously reflective, it is testimony to the human capacity not merely to adapt but to reinvent: to find new lives for ourselves without forfeiting the dignity and meaning of our old ones." — Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post "As a childhood memoir, Lost in Translation has the colors and nuance of Nabokov'sSpeak, Memory. As an account of a young mind wandering into great books, it recalls Sartre's Words. … As an anthropology of Eastern European émigré life, American academe and the Upper West Side of Manhattan, it's every bit as deep and wicked as anything by Cynthia Ozick. … A brilliant, polyphonic book that is itself an act of faith, a Bach Fugue." — John Leonard, Harper’s Magazine

Polish Canadians

Polish Canadians PDF Author: T. W. Krychowski
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Canada
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description


Dear Canada: Pieces of the Past

Dear Canada: Pieces of the Past PDF Author: Carol Matas
Publisher: Scholastic Canada
ISBN: 1443124567
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
A young Jewish girl recounts her experiences during a horrifying time in recent history. As Rose begins her diary, she is in her third home since coming to Winnipeg. Traumatized by her experiences in the Holocaust, she struggles to connect with others, and above all, to trust again. When her new guardian, Saul, tries to get Rose to deal with what happened to her during the war, she begins writing in her diary about how she survived the murder of the Jews in Poland by going into hiding. Memories of herself and her mother being taken in by those willing to risk sheltering Jews, moving from place to place, being constantly on the run to escape capture, begin to flood her diary pages. Recalling those harrowing days, includingwhen they stumbled on a resistance cell deep in the forest and lived underground in filthy conditions, begins to take its toll on Rose. As she delves deeper into her past, she is haunted by the most terrifying memory of all. Will she find the courage to bear witness to her mother's ultimate sacrifice?

Gathering a Heritage

Gathering a Heritage PDF Author: Thomas M. Prymak
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442665505
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
Since the 1970s and 1980s, the study of immigration and ethnicity has grown to become an essential aspect of North American history. In Gathering a Heritage, Thomas M. Prymak uses the essays and articles he has written over the past thirty years as a historian of Ukrainian and Ukrainian Canadian history to reflect on the evolution of ethnic studies in Canada and the United States. The essays included in this book explore the history of Ukrainian and Slavonic immigration to North America and the literature through which these communities and their historians have sought to recapture their past. Each previously published essay is revised and expanded and several more appear here for the first time – including the fascinating story of French Canadian writer Gabrielle Roy’s connections with Ukrainian Canadians and her tumultuous affair with a Ukrainian Canadian nationalist in pre-war London.

The Roots are Polish

The Roots are Polish PDF Author: Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description


Flight and Freedom

Flight and Freedom PDF Author: Ratna Omidvar and Dana Wagner
Publisher: Between the Lines
ISBN: 1771132302
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description


From a Polish Country House Kitchen

From a Polish Country House Kitchen PDF Author: Anne Applebaum
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452110557
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
In making her new home in Poland in 1989, Applebaum had to cook with ingredients that were local, fresh, and available. She learned how to make food that was, if not exactly traditional, in the Polish spirit. The national rebirth of Poland in the last two decades has meant the rebirth of its cuisine, and the authors have modernized many of its dishes, without losing any of the centuries-old flavors. Collects ninety Polish recipes, including roasted winter vegetables, stewed beef rolls with kasha, pork loin stuffed with prunes, and fruit pierogi.