1920 - in August 1920, the Polish Army, under the leadership of Józef Piłsudski, halted the Soviet offensive outside Warsaw.

1968 - see: March 1968.

1981 - in December of that year, General Jaruzelski's regime introduced martial law in Poland and made Solidarność illegal.

Aktion Sühnenzeichen - Signs of Repentance Action, a civil movement that arose in East Germany in the 1960s. Its members initiated a movement serving reconciliation with Poles (for example, trips by German youth groups to tidy up the terrain of former concentration camps).

Anders's army - as a result of the Sikorski-Maisky agreement, some Soviet citizens who had been deported to the eastern Soviet Union during the period 1939-1941 were freed and allowed to join armed forces under the command of the government-in-exile in London. The commander of these forces was General Władysław Anders. The army left Russia and traveled by way of Iran and Palestine to Italy, where it took part in battles such as the capture of Monte Cassino (1944).

Armed Combat Union - a nationwide anti-Nazi underground organization in occupied Poland, under the command of the Polish government-in-exile in London; later transformed into the Home Army.

"a balance-sheet of wrongs" - an allusion to the poem by the Polish communist poet Władysław Broniewski who wrote, in the face of the German threat to Poland in 1939:
          "A balance-sheet of wrongs
          No foreign hand will right,
          But no one will shirk bloodshed"

"Barbarossa" - code-name for the 1941 German offensive against the Soviet Union.

BCP(b) - All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), the official name of the Soviet communist party during the Stalinist period.

Berman, Jakub - communist strongman in Poland during the Stalinist period, responsible for the introduction of Soviet ideology; of Jewish ethnic background.

bezhentsy - Russian term used after the 1939 campaign for refugees, mostly Jewish, who fled from the German to the Russian portion of occupied Poland.

Biuletyn Informacyjny - The Information Bulletin, the main press organ of the Polish Underground State.

Blue Police - a popular name, taken from the color of their uniforms, for the Polish police in the service of the Germans in the General Government.

The Boys from Arms Square - novel for teenagers by the Hungarian writer Ferenc Molná r, popular in Poland.

Bund - the Jewish socialist party founded in Vilna in 1897.

Campo di Fiori - 1943 poem by Czesław Miłosz; a poetic coming to terms with Polish indifference to the tragedy of the extermination of Jews.

Chekha - Special Commission Against Counter-revolution and Sabotage, the political police in the first years of existence of the Soviet state (predecessor to the NKVD and KGB).

Cichy, Michał - journalist from Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper who wrote a controversial article about incidents of Jews being murdered by the soldiers of the Home Army during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

Citizen's Militia - the police in communist Poland.

eastern marches - the eastern part of the Second Polish Republic, inhabited by Ukrainians, Belorussians, Lithuanians and Jews, along with Poles.

Edelman, Marek - one of the leaders of ŻOB, the Jewish Fighting Organization, during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943; a member of the democratic opposition during the 1970s and 1980s.

Einsatzgruppe, Einsatzkommando, Sonderkommando - special Nazi police units charged with the extermination of Jews in newly occupied territories beginning in 1941.

Endlösung - German for "The Final Solution" (". of the Jewish Question"), one of the Nazi code-terms for the Holocaust.

"First Brigade" - the anthem of the First Legion Brigade, a military formation led by Józef Piłsudski during the First World War; one of the best known Polish patriotic songs.

first Soviet occupation -1939-41, in contrast to the second, which occurred after 1944.

General Government - the part of Nazi-occupied Poland that was not directly annexed to the German Reich or to the so-called Eastern Lands (Ostland); governed by Hans Frank from Wawel Castle in Cracow. All authority was in German hands, exercised by thousands of German bureaucrats who arrived from the Reich, and Poles were subject to terror and extermination.

The Ghastly Decade 1939-1948 - title of a book by Jan Tomasz Gross, published in Poland in 1998 and describing-according to its subtitle-"stereotyopes about Jews, Poles, Germans and Communists" during the 1940's.

Haller's army - a Polish military formation during the First World War, popularly named for its leader, General Józef Haller; incorporated into the Polish Army after the recovery of independence (see: Second Polish Republic).

Home Army - 1942-45, the underground nationwide Polish anti-Nazi organization under the command of the government-in-exile in London. It carried out numerous acts of sabotage and armed offensives (Warsaw Uprising, 1944). In communist Poland, Home Army soldiers were persecuted, and some joined the secret organization WiN (Freedom and Independence).

Ingarden Roman - Polish philosopher, a phenomenologist and student of Husserl.

Institute of National Remembrance - the official organ that took over the archives of the communist secret police. Its task is to make these files available to victims of persecution as well as to journalists and researchers investigating crimes committed by the totalitarian Nazi and Communist states against Polish citizens and others of Polish nationality; also charged with conducting research and educational programs on the subject.

Jagielski, Wojciech - journalist for the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, known for reportage on contemporary armed conflicts.

"Jewish communism" - a long-standing anti-Semitic stereotype blaming the Jews for advocating, introducing, and running the communist system.

Jewish Historical Institute - a Warsaw-based organization, successor to a Jewish educational and research organization that held university-level official status before the war, conducting research on the history of the Jews in Poland.

Kapuściński, Ryszard - reporter, writer and commentator specializing in international issues, and in particular those connected with the Third World.

Karski, Jan - Polish political envoy for the underground authorities in Nazi-occupied Poland who brought information about the extermination of the Jews to the West.

Katyn - a town in Russia where, in 1940, the NKVD murdered several thousand imprisoned Polish reserve officers; a symbol of Soviet crimes against the Poles. The communist authorities banned the truth about this crime, maintaining the Soviet version that blamed the mass murder on the Germans.

Kielce pogrom - In July 1946, the inhabitants of Kielce murdered 42 local Jews. As a result of the pogrom, a majority of Polish Jews who had survived the Shoah left Poland. There is still controversy over the role of the Stalinist secret police in this pogrom.

Kolyma - a river in eastern Siberia near which the harshest penal camps in Stalin's Russia were concentrated.

Kołakowski, Leszek - Polish philosopher and writer who moved permanently to Britain after March 1968.

Korczak, Janusz (pen name of Henryk Goldszmit) - Polish physician, educator, and press and radio commentator of Jewish ethnic origins, a precursor of contemporary educational practices; he voluntarily accompanied "his" children when they were deported during the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto and died with them in August 1942 in the gas chamber at the Nazi death camp in Treblinka.

Kultura (Paris) - the most important postwar Polish émigré monthly, which published texts that could not be printed in communist Poland because of censorship. Published through 2000.

"Let's choose the future" - electoral slogan of Aleksander Kwaśniewski, the leader of Polish post-communists, during his victorious presidential electoral campaign in 1995 (he was re-elected in 2000).

Main Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation - formed after the fall of communism fall as the official organ dealing with research on and the investigation (including criminal prosecutions) of crimes committed by Germans occupying Poland as well as (in contrast to its predecessor the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland) those committed by the communist authorities during the period 1939-1956. At present, its mission is carried out by the Institute of National Remembrance.

Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland - the official organ in communist Poland dealing with research on and investigation (including criminal prosecutions) of crimes committed by Germans occupying Poland during WWII. After the fall of communism, fall it was transformed into the Main Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation.

March 1968 - the student protests against limitations of freedom of speech; after its suppression the communist authorities forced a wave of Jewish emigration from Poland.

March events - see: March 1968.

martial law - see: 1981.

The Medallions - a collection of stories by Zofia Nałkowska, describing the reality of the Nazi state, including the concentration camps (1946).

Michnik, Adam - leading opposition figure in communist Poland, a participant in protests including those in March 1968. After 1989, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, the daily with the largest circulation in Poland

Mickiewicz, Adam - one of great poets of Polish Romanticism and one of the most important figures of Polish culture.

Miracle on the Vistula - the popular name given to the battle outside Warsaw in 1920.

Moczar, Mieczysław - pseudonym of the leader of the 'nationalist' faction of the Polish Communist Party who was responsible for the anti-Semitic campaign after March 1968.

Myśl Polska - a low-circulation, extremely nationalistic periodical.

Nasz Dziennik - a nationalistic Catholic daily.

National Democracy - a general term for parties and groupings with a nationalistic tendency in pre-war Poland.

National-Radical Camp - a political formation in the 30s associated with youthful adherents of the National Democracy movement; responsible for anti-Semitic acts and excesses.

neither Jews, nor Romans or Greeks - an allusion to two fragments from the New Testament: the epistles of St. Paul to the Romans (10,12) and to the Colossians (3,11).

Niedziela - right-wing Catholic weekly.

NKVD - The Peoples' Bureau for Internal Affairs, the political police in Stalin's USSR.

partitions of Poland - between 1772 and 1795, Russia, Prussia, and Austria divided among themselves the territory of the Polish State (First Republic); "partitions" also refers to the parts of Poland under the control of each of these "partitioning powers" until the recovery of Polish independence in 1918.

Poles from Kazakhstan - in the 30's several tens of thousands of Poles, as a "national minority," were deported from the Soviet Ukraine to Kazakhstan; an even greater number were deported during 1939-41 from the occupied eastern Polish territories.

Polish Underground State - the common name during the Second World War for the clandestine army and civilian structures in Nazi-occupied Poland; the Underground State recognized the authority of the London government-in-exile.

"Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto" - an essay by Jan Błoński, published in the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny (1987), analyzing of Polish attitudes towards the extermination of the Jews.

A Pretense of Life - a book of essays and recollections of the literary critic Kazimierz Wyka on the moral dilemmas facing Poles under the German occupation.

PZPR - United Polish Workers Party, the ruling party (practically the only one) in communist Poland.

Recovered Territories - the official propaganda term for former eastern territories of Germany that were given to Poland in 1945 on the strength of the agreement in Potsdam. The term referred to the fact that these territories belonged to the Polish state in the Middle Ages. The majority German population there was resettled, mainly to West Germany, and its place taken by Polish settlers, many of whom had themselves been expelled from the formerly Polish lands in the east that were awarded to the Soviet Union as part of the same postwar settlement, which was drawn up by the leaders of the USSR, USA, and Great Britain without Polish input.

Reich-Ranicki, Marcel - the best known contemporary German literary critic; from a Jewish family from Poland

royal Piast tribe - a fragment of the poem 'Rota' by Maria Konopnicka; a popular patriotic song.

sanacja - ["reformation"], popular term for the political formation that ruled Poland from 1926-1939; the name derives from the slogan "moral reformation"; established by men closely associated with Marshal Józef Piłsudski.

Schulz, Bruno - Polish-Jewish writer who described in lyrical-surrealistic prose the world of the Jewish small towns of eastern Poland; murdered by a German officer in the Drohobycz ghetto.

SD - Sicherheitsdienst, "security service" (political intelligence) of the Nazi Party (NSDAP - National Socialist German Workers' Party).

Second Polish Republic - the Polish state from 1918-1939, reborn after the period of partitions.

selsovet - [Russian: "village council"] the lowest organ of facade local government in the Soviet state.

Sikorski-Maisky Agreement - In September 1939, the Soviet Union, in an understanding with the Germans (the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact) using the pretext of the disintegration of the Polish state, took over eastern Poland. After Hitler's attack on the USSR in 1941, the Polish supreme commander and Prime Minister in exile, General Władysław Sikorski, signed an agreement renewing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union (signed by Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador in England). In 1943, Stalin broke off relations with Poland after the Katyn crime was revealed.

Sipo - Sicherheitspolizei ["security police"], one of political police formations of the Third Reich.

sledovatel - [Russian: "investigator"], in the Soviet State, sledovatele carried out investigations and interrogations in political cases and regularly subjected the "suspects" to psychological and physical torture.

spetsposolek - Russian term for a settlement of deportees sentenced by the Stalinist system to banishment in desolate places such as Kazakhstan and Siberia.

Szeptycki, Andrzej - Greek Catholic metropolitan (archbishop) of Lwów, spiritual leader of Ukrainians in Galicia during the war.

szmalcownicy - common, contemptuous term for persons who blackmailed Jews in hiding outside the ghetto in German-occupied Poland, using the threat of informing on them to the German authorities.

Tischner, Józef - Catholic priest and philosopher, one of the leading authorities in contemporary Poland.

UB - Security Office, the political police during the Stalinist epoch in Poland.

Umschlagplatz - the place where, in the summer 1942, the Warsaw Jews were assembled before deportation by rail to the Treblinka death camp.

Union of Labor - small contemporary social-democratic Polish political party.

Volksdeutsch - popular term, derived from German, for a Polish inhabitant of the General Government who declared himself or herself to be ethnically German by signing the so-called German nationality list (Deutsche Volksliste).

With Fire and Sword - a novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Polish 1905 Nobel Prize winner) depicting the period of the Polish-Cossack wars in the seventeenth century.

Wronki - a town in central Poland. During the Stalinist period, many Home Army soldiers and freedom fighters found themselves in the local prison there.

ZBoWiD - Association of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy, the official and only permitted organization for World War II veterans in communist Poland.

Zomowcy - derived from the acronym ZOMO, "Motorized Citizen's Militia Reserves," a riot police formation used to suppress popular demonstrations, especially during the martial law period; see 1981.

Żegota - Council for Aid to the Jews, a voluntary community organization in existence from 1942-1945 as part of the structure of the Polish Underground State, concerned mainly with the material support and protection of Jews in hiding outside the ghettos.