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Features
- Magda Gessler
- What the locals like
- Jan III Sobieski
- A new kind of loo
- Polish Army Day
- Disaster in Smolensk
- Three random things to help you navigate Warsaw
- The Korczak Orphanage
- Euro 2012 in Warsaw
- Yitzhok Farbarovitsh
- The story of Syrenka - The Symbol of Warsaw
- Hot beer
- Ask your Concierge
- Złota 44
- May Day
- Warsaw In Your Pocket in iPaper
- Warsaw - Did you know? (1)
- Rising '44
- Skyscrapers
- Easter in Poland
More features:
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Yitzhok Farbarovitsh
Heard of Yitzhok Farbarovitsh? We’d imagine not, in which case stop what you’re doing and give a moment to one of modern Poland’s more interesting and quirky characters.... -
The story of Syrenka - The Symbol of Warsaw
Feisty, beautiful and busty. Her image has bewitched millions, and you’ll find her film star looks printed on everything from flags to mags.... -
Warsaw - Did you know? (1)
Cult British band Joy Division were originally called Warsaw before they hit the big time. They only changed their name after concerns that concert posters might be misinterpreted as adverts selling Poland’s capital to British holidaymakers.... -
What the locals like
During June 2011 Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper invited 21 journalism students from City University London to visit the country’s largest cities to assess whether they would be ready to host the upcoming Euro 2012 football tournament.... -
May Day
The lifespan of this guide sees Poland hit National Holiday Season, and aside from Easter visitors should take note of two more dates for the diary.... -
Ask your Concierge
Dear Guests and readers of Warsaw In Your Pocket, I am pleased to announce that in January this year our Concierge Association became a member of the oldest and most prestigious association of professional hotel Concierges, and which is represented in over 45 countries -“Les Clefs d’Or.... -
Three random things to help you navigate Warsaw
Many of the great things we love about Warsaw are not immediately obvious, especially to the first time visitor, though we know at least one local who had also failed to notice a couple of these titbits we spotted while out researching.... -
Magda Gessler
The United Kingdom has Gordon Ramsay, the United States has Anthony Bourdain, and Poland has Magda Gessler.... -
Jan III Sobieski
Jan Sobieski was born in Olesko near Lwow (now Ukrainian Lviv) in 1629. His father was a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman who ensured young Jan and his brother received a first class education and they both went on to study at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow before Jan travelled abroad.... -
Euro 2012 in Warsaw
The decision to make Poland a co-host of Euro 2012 was greeted with surprise both inside and outside Poland as well as by jubilation that Michel Platini and his UEFA committee had the foresight and courage to bring such a successful tournament here.... -
Skyscrapers
Warsaw’s love affair with skyscrapers can be traced back to the 1930s and the erection of the Prudential Insurance Building.... -
Hot beer
There’s a number of ways to survive the colder months in Poland, and we’ve tried them all, from dressing up like Eskimos to sitting at home in our pants.... -
Easter in Poland
Palm Sunday (01/04/2012) marks the official beginning of Poland’s Easter festivities – perhaps the country’s most sacred holiday....
Rising '44
Pocket Book Review:
Rising ’44 by Norman Davies
It may have been a battle that determined Poland’s destiny, but to date the Warsaw Uprising has received little in the way of recognition from the Western world – so much so that it repeatedly finds itself confused with the 1943 Ghetto Uprising; most famously by German Chancellor Herzog in 1994, and most recently by French newspaper Le Figaro. Norman Davies, arguably the worlds number one authority on Polish history, attempts to redress the balance with this brick of a book.
To do so he breaks with the linear format favoured by the majority of historical authors. Instead he chooses to split his work into several clear sections, thereby allowing the reader to dive in and out of chapters of particular interest. Text is further interspersed with what Davies describes as capsules: sub-chapters comprising of personal recollections; from the blurry memories of a five-year-old child, to the diary entries of a German soldier caught in the midst of a grisly siege.
Surprisingly though, the main focus of the book is not the actual Uprising, rather the prelude and the aftermath. While the first 240 pages of the paperback version are dedicated to events prior to the outbreak of combat, the first day of hostilities are deemed worthy of only a page. Madness. To use a lazy analogy, this is equivalent to winning through to a Cup Final, only to leave your star player on the bench. Indeed, if you’re expecting a thriller recounting savage street fights you will be disappointed.
Davies has also faced criticism for his decision to Anglicize all Polish names; Ulica Bednarska becomes Cooper Street, Miotła becomes Broom etc. For foreigners familiar with Poland, and Warsaw, this can be deeply frustrating. Rising ’44 lacks the pace and the fizz of Antony Beevor’s excellent works on Stalingrad and Berlin, and it has a tendency to become bogged down in the impossibly complicated politics of the day, making it an often demanding read. Fluidity is further disrupted by the constant need to cross-reference the core text with the stack of notes, maps and translations at the back; have plenty of bookmarks to hand. Furthermore, readers will be left with plenty of unanswered questions. The fate of German combatants is largely ignored, while the wholesale destruction of Warsaw is covered in just fleeting detail.
To his credit Davies is a superb historian, and his habit of unearthing fantastic detail often saves interest from flagging. For instance, we learn that the Polish Home Army contained a battalion of deaf and dumb troops, of the existence of a concentration camp inside the city walls (KZ Warschau), and there is a superb section on life in occupied Warsaw. The fate of the insurgents makes particularly interesting reading, and Davies manages to track veterans from as far afield as Mexico and Australia. We learn of one who went on to become a famous anthropologist in the wilds of the Andes, and of an amputee who became a world legless ski champion. The days of state-sponsored terror are described in vivid detail, along with the Soviet show trials and subsequent imprisonment of many of the Uprising’s leaders. In one anecdote the author reveals how one veteran was spied on by the security services for twenty five years following the Uprising. State files opened in 1990 show that the last report on him was written during his funeral; the informant was his wife.
Davies does not shirk from the facts, and much of the book will make uncomfortable reading for Britons. The author is scathing, and deservedly so, towards the allied powers, themselves responsible for double-crossing Poland and pandering to Stalin’s whims; Britain’s indifference to the fate of insurgents empitomized by the original refusal to grant General ‘Bor’ Komorowski exile on her shores. This disgraceful chapter in British history is not passed over.
Rising ‘44 is at times a laborious read, but ultimately a rewarding one. This is not a book about the horror of war, rather a keen exploration of the political intrigues between Whitehall and the Kremlin. Davies warns in his introduction that this is not a definitive account of the Uprising, and with so many questions left unanswered, and so many files still locked in Moscow vaults, we are inclined to agree with him. But this is without a doubt the best book on the subject to date, and if nothing else it is encouraging to see the Warsaw Uprising finally being granted the publicity it deserves. A must for any Polophiles bookshelf. In Your Pocket verdict: 7/10.
Rising ’44 by Norman Davies
To do so he breaks with the linear format favoured by the majority of historical authors. Instead he chooses to split his work into several clear sections, thereby allowing the reader to dive in and out of chapters of particular interest. Text is further interspersed with what Davies describes as capsules: sub-chapters comprising of personal recollections; from the blurry memories of a five-year-old child, to the diary entries of a German soldier caught in the midst of a grisly siege.
Surprisingly though, the main focus of the book is not the actual Uprising, rather the prelude and the aftermath. While the first 240 pages of the paperback version are dedicated to events prior to the outbreak of combat, the first day of hostilities are deemed worthy of only a page. Madness. To use a lazy analogy, this is equivalent to winning through to a Cup Final, only to leave your star player on the bench. Indeed, if you’re expecting a thriller recounting savage street fights you will be disappointed.
Davies has also faced criticism for his decision to Anglicize all Polish names; Ulica Bednarska becomes Cooper Street, Miotła becomes Broom etc. For foreigners familiar with Poland, and Warsaw, this can be deeply frustrating. Rising ’44 lacks the pace and the fizz of Antony Beevor’s excellent works on Stalingrad and Berlin, and it has a tendency to become bogged down in the impossibly complicated politics of the day, making it an often demanding read. Fluidity is further disrupted by the constant need to cross-reference the core text with the stack of notes, maps and translations at the back; have plenty of bookmarks to hand. Furthermore, readers will be left with plenty of unanswered questions. The fate of German combatants is largely ignored, while the wholesale destruction of Warsaw is covered in just fleeting detail.
To his credit Davies is a superb historian, and his habit of unearthing fantastic detail often saves interest from flagging. For instance, we learn that the Polish Home Army contained a battalion of deaf and dumb troops, of the existence of a concentration camp inside the city walls (KZ Warschau), and there is a superb section on life in occupied Warsaw. The fate of the insurgents makes particularly interesting reading, and Davies manages to track veterans from as far afield as Mexico and Australia. We learn of one who went on to become a famous anthropologist in the wilds of the Andes, and of an amputee who became a world legless ski champion. The days of state-sponsored terror are described in vivid detail, along with the Soviet show trials and subsequent imprisonment of many of the Uprising’s leaders. In one anecdote the author reveals how one veteran was spied on by the security services for twenty five years following the Uprising. State files opened in 1990 show that the last report on him was written during his funeral; the informant was his wife.
Davies does not shirk from the facts, and much of the book will make uncomfortable reading for Britons. The author is scathing, and deservedly so, towards the allied powers, themselves responsible for double-crossing Poland and pandering to Stalin’s whims; Britain’s indifference to the fate of insurgents empitomized by the original refusal to grant General ‘Bor’ Komorowski exile on her shores. This disgraceful chapter in British history is not passed over.
Rising ‘44 is at times a laborious read, but ultimately a rewarding one. This is not a book about the horror of war, rather a keen exploration of the political intrigues between Whitehall and the Kremlin. Davies warns in his introduction that this is not a definitive account of the Uprising, and with so many questions left unanswered, and so many files still locked in Moscow vaults, we are inclined to agree with him. But this is without a doubt the best book on the subject to date, and if nothing else it is encouraging to see the Warsaw Uprising finally being granted the publicity it deserves. A must for any Polophiles bookshelf. In Your Pocket verdict: 7/10.
The British government didn't give a 'rat' about Poland due to the fact that it has already been infiltrated and influenced by the Zionist Jews.The entire plot was about Palestine and the creation of new Israeli terrorist State in the Middle East funded by the Rothschild family.