PHC Book Club
The PHC Book Club invites members to read a book written by a Polish author and/or about Polish heritage and culture and then to discuss it with fellow members.
The next meeting of the Book Club will be on Wednesday, July 25, 2007 @ 7pm. The book this time around will be A Polish Son in the Motherland: An American's Journey Home by Leonard Kniffel.
Here are some archived reviews from the Book Club:
April 2006 PHC Book Group Report: Necessary Lies by Eva Stachniak (Pub.2000)
Poland 1981. Anna’s Canadian study permit arrives, & she leaves her politically involved husband. In Montreal, she meets & suddenly marries William, a German, who was born in Breslau, the same city as Anna, but to her it’s Wroclaw (Vro-tswav)
The book starts slowly, but in the second half we learn about the mysteries & lies of these families from before WWII till Anna’s 1991 visit. After the Warsaw Uprising, Anna’s grandparents left their grocery store & moved to an abandoned one in Wroclaw. William and his mother were part of the German’s fleeing west, leaving their homes & businesses in the then German city of Breslau.
During our discussion, we talked about personal experiences during these times. Basia’s relatives raised horses on their Lwow farms; all was taken when over a million people were forced to leave their homes in Eastern Poland. The border of Poland was moved westward to the Curzon Line, and E.Poland became part of the Soviet Union.
Kasia told about the terrible shock of martial law, declared close to Christmas, 1981. Driving was limited, trips were canceled, and people did not want to go through everything for permission to visit parents. Peaceful protests were held monthly in Poznan near the Mickiewicz’s statue. During one protest, a friend was mortally wounded.
Eva Stachniak was born in Wroclaw. She writes: “the ruins of Breslau were still around me, the silent background to the hushed, bitter stories of the last world war…”
As one reviewer stated about the book “it describes the very complicated and controversial issues of emigration, betrayal and forgiveness. There are no solutions to any of these problems in this novel, and maybe that's why the entire story is real and very interesting.”
Today, Wroclaw, along the Odra River, is Poland’s 4th largest city, the economic capital of SW Poland’s Lower Silesia. It has had 5 names in history, and was German until the 1945 Treaty of Potsdam gave it back to Poland. Germany’s Expellees’ Association and other groups work to compensate those who lost property. A POLONIA TODAY 3/05 story stated the about 80,000 people say they are still entitled to compensation from the Polish Government, estimated at more then 2 billion euros ($2.65 billion.) Groups work to expose the guilt of informers during the Communist time.
Feb. 2006 Book Group – Marie Curie Omnibus
After reading different books about Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie, the 10 of us shared our admiration for this great scientist. Born in 1867 on Warsaw’s Freta St, behind the private school where her mother was headmistress, she grew up after the 2nd major attempt to overthrow the Russians. We discussed differences under Russian vs. Prussian control, and what school was like in Poland then and for several in our group.
Marie’s parents were of the minor szlachta class - they no longer owned land. But she visited uncles in the Carpathian foothills, & enjoyed kulig – sleigh parties that traveled manor to manor where guests danced the Mazurka. In Warsaw, the Flying University helped educate over a thousand women. Polish Positivism could solve society’s socioeconomic and political problems. Marie admired novelist Eliza Orzeszkowa writing “a woman possesses the same rights as a man.” After studies at Paris’s Sorbonne, she was the 1st woman awarded a Nobel Prize in 1903. She knew many famous people.
Professor Szybalski told us about attending a Warsaw reception for Marie Curie when he was 10 or 11. Her radiation burned fingers were bandaged, and he was scared he’d have to kiss her hand. She smiled, put her hand on his head and asked what he wanted to be, and encouraged him. He is proud to be a countryman of such a great person.
Marie combined brilliance with hard work to discover the new elements radium and polonium, named for Poland, & is still the only person to win 2 Nobel prizes. She said, “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is to be understood”. Her discoveries started the study of atomic physics. We discussed past & current issues about the atomic bomb. Recent books are: Radiation and Modern Life: Fulfilling Marie Curie’s Dream by A. Waltar & Helene Langevin-Joliot and Before the Fallout: From Curie to Hiroshima “wonderfully told…weaves history, physics, politics & military strategies” by Diana Preston.
In 1934 she died from overexposure to radioactivity, the word she first named. Eve Curie’s 1937 biography of her mother is very personal, sad at times, and was well liked by our group. Marie Curie and Her Daughter (138 pages) has many pictures and explains issues clearly. Our S. Central Library System has most books mentioned here.
In 1990 Marie’s still radioactive papers were released, so books published since then have some new information. Susan Quinn’s A Life is called “carefully researched, well-rounded…a more detailed & balanced description…than previously available.” None of us read Barbara Goldsmith’s Obsessive Genius, a “straight forward”…incisive chronicle of Marie’s “intensely dramatic life”, but “weakest at explaining the theoretical basis for her scientific breakthroughs.” (In quotes from Publisher’s Weekly) The 2004 Talk of the Nation interview with Goldsmith is available here.