Perth Polish Support Group

Poland Flag
and Fast Facts

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Poland Information
and History

The largest country in central Europe, most of Poland is low-lying, with woods and lakes. Unlike many of its neighbors, Poland has only a minuscule minority population. Poles as a nation are unified by the Polish language and a common religion-Roman Catholicism.

Buffered by the Baltic Sea in the north and the Carpathian Mountains in the south, Poland enjoys no such natural protection to the east and west. Nazi Germany invaded in 1939 and built the Auschwitz concentration camp, where 1.35 million Jews and more than 100,000 others were murdered. After World War II, Joseph Stalin seized a chunk of eastern Poland for the Soviet Union.

Communists took power in 1947 but did not win Poles away from Roman Catholicism. In 1980 soaring prices and tumbling wages spawned Solidarity, the Eastern bloc's first free-trade union. In 1989 Solidarity swept Poland's first free elections in more than 40 years and began moving the U.S.S.R.'s largest, most populous satellite toward democracy and free enterprise. It was the first Eastern European country to overthrow communist rule.

Faced with triple-digit inflation, Poland in 1990 introduced a bold economic reform plan. It developed a market-oriented economy and joined the European Union in 2004. Poland joined NATO in 1999, and it increased its profile on the international stage by joining the U.S.-led military campaign in Iraq. A Polish-led international force, including 2,400 Polish troops, took over responsibility for south-central Iraq in September 2003.

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ECONOMY

Industry: machine building, iron and steel, coal mining, chemicals, shipbuilding.
Agriculture: potatoes, fruits, vegetables, wheat; poultry.
Exports: machinery and transport equipment, intermediate manufactured goods.

Text source: National Geographic Atlas of the World, Eighth Edition, 2004

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Facts about Poland

Here are a few interesting facts about Poland. Let us know if you think we should include other facts (whether useful or useless!) or additional basic information. If you have a question about Poland, do contact us; we might even be able to answer it for you.

1. The population of Poland is 39 million.
2. The six biggest cities in Poland are Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Wroclaw, Poznan, and Gdansk
3. The highest point in Poland is Rysy in the Tatra Mountains (2,499m)
4. The coldest part of Poland is in the the North-East and the warmest is in the South-west.
5. The most popular name for a dog in Poland is Burek (meaning a brownish-grey colour)!
6. Poland is the the ninth biggest country in Europe and it shares frontiers with seven countries: Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Germany.
7. Poland's capitals have been Gniezno, Poznan, Krakow and Warsaw. Lublin has twice served as Poland's temporary capital, after both the First and Second World Wars.
8. Geographically, Poland is not in the Eastern Europe. It is in the very centre of Europe.
9. In Poland most Poles consider their name day (in Polish: "imieniny") more important than their birthdays. People with the same day celebrate on the same day each year.
10. The national symbol of Poland is the White tailed Eagle.

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Five culural best:

1. Hejnal Mariacki (The Krakow Signal)

"Since the Middle Ages every hour has been marked by the call of a trumpet atop a spire in the Church of St. Mary (Mariacki). This somber melody is familiar not just to those within earshot of Krakow's historic Market Square, but to every Pole thanks to Polish national radio, which broadcasts it live each day at noon. The tradition has been traced back more than 700 years, when it was used to signal the opening and closing of the city gates and to alert the citizens of Krakow of an impending attack. The melody stops abruptly before its last notes, commemorating a trumpeter who was shot with an arrow through the throat as he played."

2. Swiecenie Pokarmow (The Blessing of the Easter Feast)

"In Poland, Easter is as elaborate and meaningful as Christmas. For the blessing of the Easter feast, Poles bring baskets laden with food to special church services. Each item has a symbolic meaning: lamb to represent Christ, salt for purification, horseradish for the sacrifice, and eggs to symbolize life and the resurrection. Painting Easter eggs in either solid colors (pisanki) or intricate patterns (kraszanki) is also an important part of the tradition."

3. Lany Poniedzialek (Easter Wet Monday)

"The tradition of sprinkling water to symbolize baptism and renewal began as an ancient folk ritual in Polish villages. Traditionally, young men threw water at unmarried women, but today many Poles on the street must beware of youths wielding buckets of water and dousing everyone in sight."

4. Christmas Eve Oplatek

"In most Polish homes Christmas Eve supper begins with sharing oplatek, a thin wafer divided among family and friends. Oplatek bears resemblance to the communion wafers used in a Catholic mass but represents a spiritual fellowship that transcends religion. The unleavened bread, sometimes adorned with images of the season, symbolizes wishes of peace and goodwill and is shared with thoughts of those unable to be home for the holiday as well as departed loved ones."

5. Andrzejki (St. Andrew's Eve)

"This celebration marks the beginning of Advent. On November 29, Poles gather for a night of merriment and fortune telling. We dance, play games, and get a glimpse of the future. Unmarried girls take turns pouring melted wax into a bucket of water, searching for clues to their matrimonial prospects in the hardened cloud-like shapes. The timeless notions of romance and true love keep this tradition alive, and many young Poles celebrate the holiday in modern dance clubs."

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Discover Polish
Music and Dance

In the thousand years since the Polan tribe became a nation on the flatlands of northern Europe, the territory that comprises modern Poland has been ruled by a Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, a Napoleonic duchy, Germany and the USSR. The interaction between Poland and those outside cultures affected the development of a Polish culture that would, in turn, affect cultures around the world. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of Polish music.

Polish folk music has it roots in the same Slavic tradition as Ukranian, Czeck and Russian music, and is strongly related to dance. The mazurka is perhaps the best known of the Polish dances. A lively three-beat form that accompanies a vibrant, improvisational dance, the mazurka comes from the Mazowsze region in east-central Poland. The kujawiak and oberek dances, which employ a similar beat to the mazurka, also come from central Poland. The kujawiak is a slower, dignified style, which evokes stalks of grain swaying gently in the wind. It is often paired with the oberek, a vigorous and acrobatic dance which sees the dancers spinning around the room.

Southern Poland, and the city of Krakow in particular, give us the krakowiak and the polonez. The krakowiak, a duple-time galloping dance, is the national dance of Poland, and is generally performed in traditional Polish garb, with women in flowery skirts and aprons and men in embroidered vests and square hats. The polonez (more commonly known as the polonaise in the West) is a triple-time form derived from the 17th century chodzony, or "walking dance."

Along with the mazurka, the polonez became a popular dance in European ballrooms in the nineteenth century. In the early part of that century, in the wake of the French Revolution, a tide of nationalism rose across Europe. Polish nationalism and the accompanying Polish independence movement, invigorated Polish culture, with folk-influenced Romanticism as the dominant artistic style. Composer and ethnologist Oskar Kolberg amassed the first comprehensive collection of Polish folk songs during this period. Polish pianist and composer Frederic Chopin wrote fifty-seven mazurkas and sixteen polonaises, contributing greatly to the popularity of those forms in Western Europe. Stanislaw Moniuszko used Polish folk themes in opera, including his great operatic work, Halka. Polish artists, scientists and scholars spread Polish culture across Europe, forging cultural connections that would influence artists and thinkers well into the next century.

Poland finally regained independence after the First World War, but soon found itself at the center of the events that would lead to World War II-notably its invasion and partition by the Soviet Union and Germany. Six million Poles, half of them Jews, were killed in the Second World War, a higher percentage of the population than any other country, and when Poland's boundaries were redrawn at the end of the war, it lost twenty percent of its land. Ethnic groups were forced to migrate, mixing Poles, Germans, Ukranians and Jews and disrupting regional cultural landscapes. Klezmer music was annihilated along with the Jewish population. Gypsy music and musicians met a similar fate. Since the nineties, klezmer music has rebounded in many countries across Europe, but still remains largely absent from Poland.

Poland emerged from World War II as a Soviet client state: the People's Republic of Poland. Under communist rule, folk musicians were relegated to state controlled ensembles. These ensembles existed to perpetuate an image of Poland as a proud peasant republic. The distinct folk traditions of northern, central and southern Poland were homogenized into a bland "national music". To the average Pole, the folk music played by state ensembles was unfamiliar and boring, and as regional music groups withered away, the vibrant folk tradition in Poland withered with them.

Since the fall of the USSR and Poland's acceptance into the EU, Polish folk music has revived in Poland and throughout Europe. Podhale, the mountainous southern region of Poland, has become a bastion for traditional folk culture. In the regional capitol of Zakopane, strings band still play goralski music (named for the Goral mountains which border the region) dressed in felt trousers, broad leather belts, and blow hats adorned with cowrie shells. One is still likely to find couples dancing as high-voiced men sing songs of Polish folk heroes in the traditional idyzowanie style. Zakopane has become a popular tourist destination for people wishing to immerse themselves in traditional Polish life.

In the cities, folk music exists in different forms. The Trebuina Family Band is a traditional Polish string and wind band that made a name for itself in 1994, when it teamed with Jamaican reggae outfit The Twinkle Brothers, to produce two albums of Polish-reggae fusion music. The albums were an unlikely success in Europe and beyond. The Motion Trio, an accordion trio whose repertoire encompasses traditional Polish melodies, experimental soundscapes, and avant garde idioms, has played to great acclaim around the world, and has shared the stage with such musical luminaries as Joe Zawinul and Bobby McFerrin.

The popular Warsaw Village Band, formed as a direct response to the co-opting of folk music during the Communist era, attempts to reclaim folk music for modern Polish youth, merging traditional instrumentation and themes-including the unique bialy glos ("white voice") vocal style-with modern beats and performance styles. These hybrid folk forms complement the western-influenced pop, rock and hip hop scenes which dominate Polish cities.

Outside of Poland, EU citizenship has opened up doors to Polish emigrants, who have set up communities in many major cities in Europe, bringing their culture into contact with others, the results of which are entirely new hybrids of traditional styles. - Alex Barron