Kosciuszko monument at Cleveland Museum of Art - Invocation
Rev. Eric Orzech, Chaplain, Polish American Congress Ohio Division and National Vice-President of Polish American Priests Association gave the invocation at the 2013 celebration of Polish Constitution Day and the unveiling of the Kosciuszko monument at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Father Orzech is pastor of both St Stanislaus and St Casimir parish in Cleveland.
General Kosciuszko's 267th birthday.
General Kosciuszko's 267th birthday, to see his monument lifted from its base and loaded onto a truck headed for the conservation artist's studio in Ohio.
History of the Jews in Poland | Wikipedia audio article
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History of the Jews in Poland
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SUMMARY
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The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the Partitions of Poland which began in 1772, in particular, with the discrimination and persecution of Jews in the Russian Empire. During World War II there was a nearly complete genocidal destruction of the Polish Jewish community by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, during the 1939–1945 German occupation of Poland and the ensuing Holocaust. Since the fall of communism in Poland, there has been a Jewish revival, featuring an annual Jewish Culture Festival, new study programs at Polish secondary schools and universities, the work of synagogues such as the Nożyk Synagogue, and Warsaw's Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 through to the early years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe. Known as paradisus iudaeorum (Latin for Paradise of the Jews), it became a shelter for persecuted and expelled European Jewish communities and the home to the world's largest Jewish community of the time. According to some sources, about three-quarters of the world's Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century. With the weakening of the Commonwealth and growing religious strife (due to the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation), Poland's traditional tolerance began to wane from the 17th century onward. After the Partitions of Poland in 1795 and the destruction of Poland as a sovereign state, Polish Jews were subject to the laws of the partitioning powers, the increasingly antisemitic Russian Empire, as well as Austria-Hungary and Kingdom of Prussia (later a part of the German Empire). Still, as Poland regained independence in the aftermath of World War I, it was the center of the European Jewish world with one of the world's largest Jewish communities of over 3 million. Antisemitism was a growing problem throughout Europe in those years, from both the political establishment and the general population.At the start of World War II, Poland was partitioned between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (see Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact). One-fifth of the Polish population perished during World War II, half of them were 3,000,000 Polish Jews murdered in The Holocaust, constituting 90% of Polish Jewry. Although the Holocaust occurred largely in German-occupied Poland, there was little collaboration with the Nazis by its citizens. Collaboration by individual Poles has been described as smaller than in other occupied countries. Statistics of the Israeli War Crimes Commission indicate that less than 0.1% of Poles collaborated with the Nazis. Examples of Polish attitudes to German atrocities varied widely, from actively risking death in order to save Jewish lives, and passive refusal to inform on them; to indifference, blackmail, and in extreme cases, participation in pogroms such as the Jedwabne pogrom. Grouped by nationality, Poles represent the largest number of people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.
In the post-war period, many of the approximately 200,000 Jewish survivors registered at Central Committee of Polish Jews or CKŻP (of whom 136,000 arrived from the Soviet Union) left the People's Republic of Poland for the nascent State of Israel and North or South America. Their departure was hastened by the destruction of Jewish institutions, post-war violence and the hostility of the Communist Party to both religion and private enterprise, but also because in 1946–1947 Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to allow free Jewish aliyah to Israel, without visas or exit permits. Britain demanded Poland to halt the exodus, but their pressure was largely unsuccessful. Most o ...
Poland | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
Poland
00:03:02 1 Etymology
00:03:42 2 History
00:03:51 2.1 Prehistory and protohistory
00:05:43 2.2 Piast dynasty
00:09:26 2.3 Jagiellon dynasty
00:12:27 2.4 Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
00:16:27 2.5 Partitions
00:19:09 2.6 Era of insurrections
00:23:38 2.7 Reconstruction
00:26:43 2.8 World War II
00:32:40 2.9 Post-war communism
00:35:24 2.10 1990s to present
00:38:32 3 Geography
00:40:09 3.1 Geology
00:43:46 3.2 Waters
00:48:15 3.3 Land use
00:50:07 3.4 Biodiversity
00:52:05 3.5 Climate
00:54:08 4 Politics
00:56:32 4.1 Law
01:00:23 4.2 Foreign relations
01:02:55 4.3 Administrative divisions
01:04:06 4.4 Military
01:08:03 4.5 Law enforcement and emergency services
01:09:29 5 Economy
01:13:56 5.1 Corporations
01:15:28 5.2 Tourism
01:17:21 5.3 Energy
01:19:18 5.4 Transport
01:23:19 5.5 Science and technology
01:26:00 5.6 Communications
01:27:42 6 Demographics
01:29:17 6.1 Urbanization
01:29:25 6.2 Languages
01:31:58 6.3 Ethnicity
01:35:04 6.4 Religion
01:38:58 6.5 Health
01:40:59 6.6 Education
01:43:51 7 Culture
01:44:50 7.1 Music
01:49:13 7.2 Art
01:51:49 7.3 Architecture
01:55:15 7.4 Literature
01:59:51 7.5 Cinema
02:02:15 7.6 Media
02:04:41 7.7 Cuisine
02:07:29 7.8 Sports
02:10:37 7.9 Fashion and design
02:14:16 8 See also
Listening is a more natural way of learning, when compared to reading. Written language only began at around 3200 BC, but spoken language has existed long ago.
Learning by listening is a great way to:
- increases imagination and understanding
- improves your listening skills
- improves your own spoken accent
- learn while on the move
- reduce eye strain
Now learn the vast amount of general knowledge available on Wikipedia through audio (audio article). You could even learn subconsciously by playing the audio while you are sleeping! If you are planning to listen a lot, you could try using a bone conduction headphone, or a standard speaker instead of an earphone.
You can find other Wikipedia audio articles too at:
You can upload your own Wikipedia articles through:
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates
SUMMARY
=======
Poland (Polish: Polska [ˈpɔlska] (listen)), officially the Republic of Poland (Polish: Rzeczpospolita Polska [ʐɛt͡ʂpɔˈspɔlita ˈpɔlska] (listen)), is a country located in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, covering an area of 312,696 square kilometres (120,733 sq mi), and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With a population of approximately 38.5 million people, Poland is the sixth most populous member state of the European Union. Poland's capital and largest metropolis is Warsaw. Other major cities include Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin.
The establishment of the Polish state can be traced back to A.D. 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of the realm coextensive with the territory of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented its longstanding political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest (about 1 million km2) and most populous countries of 16th- and 17th-century Europe, with a uniquely liberal political system which adopted Europe's first written national constitution, the Constitution of 3 May 1791.
More than a century after the Partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century, Poland regained its independence in 1918 with the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Germany, followed by the Soviet Union invading Poland in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. More than six million Polish citizens perished in the war. In 1947, the Polish People's Republic was established as a satellite state under Soviet influence. In the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1989, most notably through the emergence of the Solidarity movement, the sovereign state of Poland reestablished itself as a presidential democratic republic.
Poland is a developed market and regional power. It has the eighth largest and one of the most dynamic economies in the European Union, simultaneously achieving a very high rank on the Human Development Index. Additionally, the Polish Stock Exchange in Warsaw is the largest and most important in Central Europe. Poland is a developed country, which maintains a high-income economy along with very high standards of living, life quality, safety, education and economic freedom. Poland has a developed school educational system. The country provides free university education, state-funded social security and a universal health care system for all citizens. Poland has 15 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, 14 of which are cultural. Poland is a m ...
Hollywood Białystok (reż. Michał Krot, 2017)
Film opowiada o burzliwej historii amatorskich działań filmowych w Białymstoku lat 90. Główną osią obrazu są dzieje Piotra Krzywca, który po otwarciu się granic Polski na zachodnie rozwiązania, za pomocą kamery VHS postanowił zawojować świat swoimi filmami.
Namaszczony przez samego Bono z U2, Krzywiec poczuł, że można spełnić osławiony american dream również w niewielkim Białymstoku. To właśnie tam wyśnił światową stolicę kina amatorskiego.
Pomimo braku doświadczenia, sprzętu i budżetu, Krzywiec starał się robić kino akcji pełne strzelanin, wybuchów, samolotów i czołgów. Jest autorem czterech pełnometrażowych filmów akcji.
Jego działania stały się inspiracją dla wielu innych filmowców: to w Białymstoku powstały znane w obiegu undergroundowym „Fikcyjne pulpety” Wojciecha Koronkiewicza, czyli parodia „Pulp fiction” Quentina Tarantino, narkotykowe „Sceny z użycia” Kobasa Laksy oraz tetralogia komedii gore, czyli makabryczne „Kamizelki” Sławka Cywoniuka na podstawie prozy Bolesława Prusa.
O filmach opowiadają nie tylko ich twórcy, czy uczestnicy wspominanych wydarzeń (np. Andrzej Beya-Zaborski, Paweł Małaszyński, Jurek Owsiak), ale również krytycy filmowi oraz krytycy kultury.
Hollywood Białystok wzrusza i pozwala się pośmiać, ale w pierwszej kolejności ma służyć za inspirację do działania - pokazuje, jak niewiele trzeba, żeby zacząć robić filmy.
Zdjęcia - Tomasz Pienicki
Montaż - Jacek Ryżyński
Postprodukcja dźwięku - Griot Groove
Grafika - Kamila Ciborowska i Bartosz Krot