Valentine’s Day in Poland

Valentine’s Day is being celebrated in Poland, with pastry chefs across the country rustling up suitably romantic confections.

As with Halloween,Valentine’s Day passed virtually unnoticed in Poland until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.

However, in the last ten years in particular, the celebrations have become increasingly popular, especially with young Poles.

The picturesque medieval town of Chelmno, northern Poland, has thrown itself into the Valentine’s Day spirit with particular gusto.

A relic of St Valentine that was donated to the Church of St. Mary in 1630 – but largely forgotten until 2002 – has inspired an annual extravaganza on 14 February.

The municipal authorities have even gone so far as to re-brand Chelmno as “the town of the enamoured” in its official slogan.

Elsewhere in the country, flower-sellers, chocolatiers, restaurateurs and hoteliers are all doing a roaring trade.

Fat Thursday

KRAKOW TOURS – Thursday 7th Feb –  Fat Thursday.

Opens the last week of carnival revelries before the 46 day Lent, Poles unite to prove how much they cherish their tradition, standing patiently in long queues to buy the Polish doughnut called “paczek”. Gorging on the deep-fried sweet dough cakes is a must and a temptation, to which even the most determined weight-watchers tend to succumb.

Bakeries are ready to please, turning out mind-boggling amounts of the spongy, round doughnuts with different fillings and toppings. According to statistics, around 100 million doughnuts are sold on Fat Thursday. The average Pole eats two and a half such cakes, consuming a total of 500-700 calories.

It is a big set back for those dieting after Christmas consumption excesses. But then, eating a “paczek” on Fat Thursday is supposed to bring good luck.

Birkenau Block 25 – 6th February 1943

On February 6, 1943 at 3:30 am a general roll-call ordered by the camp authorities started in the female camp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

All the female prisoners were driven outside of the camp. Poorly dressed, with no food they stood on the snow-covered ground until 5 pm.

They were ordered to run back to the camp. Female guards and SS men stood at the gate and tried to speed their return by hitting them with clubs. Those women who were not able to keep up, as well as those weak, sick and elderly were pulled from the ranks with a hook, and later brought to block 25, where they awaited transportation to the gas chambers.

Block 25 at BIa sector of Birkenau camp (also known as the block of death) was called “waiting room for the gas” (Warteblock für die Vergasung). After chasing all the prisonersback to the camp a special group of the strongest women was formed and forced to collect all remaining corpses of women who had died under the blows of the SS and female guards during the roll call. The corpses were placed in the courtyard of block 25.

During the roll call about 1,000 women died.

Warsaw Ghetto: The story of its secret archive

Throughout the bitter days of the Warsaw Ghetto, a clandestine group of researchers compiled a vast archive detailing every aspect of life in this prison city built and then obliterated by the Nazis. Led by a historian, Emanuel Ringelblum, the group then buried the archive for for future generations.

On the hot night of 3 August 1942, 19-year-old David Graber signed his name on a piece of paper and put it inside a metal box at 68 Nowolipki Street, in the heart of the Warsaw Ghetto.

“I would love to see the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and scream the truth at the world,” he wrote. “May the treasure fall into good hands, may it last into better times, may it alarm and alert the world to what happened… in the 20th Century… May history be our witness.”

via BBC News – Warsaw Ghetto: The story of its secret archive.

This Day In History – Ella Gatner – Executed at Auschwitz

On January 6, 1945 four female Jewish prisoners were hanged in the female camp of Auschwitz: Ella Gartner (in the pre-war picture), Róża Robota, Regina Safir and Estera Wajsblum.

They were condemned to death because they assisted in the uprising that broke out on October 7, 1944 in the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. They provided the Sonderkommando with explosives and munition from the depots of the Weichsel-Union-Metallwerke, where three of the women worked.

The execution had two stages. Two of the women were hanged during the evening roll call in the presence of the male and female prisoners who worked the night shift at Weichsel-Union. Two others were hanged after the return of the squad that worked the dayshift. The reason for the sentence was read by the Auschwitz camp commander SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Hössler. He screamed that all traitors will be destroyed in this manner. It was the last execution in Auschwitz.