DOCSLIB.ORG

Rachael Frydman Interview for the Emmanuel Ringelblum Collection

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Rachael Frydman Interview for the Emmanuel Ringelblum Collection Wright State University CORE Scholar Emmanuel Ringelblum Collection of Oral History Memoirs of the Holocaust (MS-215) Special Collections and Archives 10-5-1978 Rachael Frydman interview for the Emmanuel Ringelblum Collection Rachel Frydman Willis Stoesz Follow this and additional works at: https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/special_ms215 Part of the History Commons Repository Citation Frydman, R., & Stoesz, W. (1978). Rachael Frydman interview for the Emmanuel Ringelblum Collection. https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/special_ms215/15 This Oral History is brought to you for free and open access by the Special Collections and Archives at CORE Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Emmanuel Ringelblum Collection of Oral History Memoirs of the Holocaust (MS-215) by an authorized administrator of CORE Scholar. For more information, please contact library- [email protected]. Interviewer: Dr. Willis Stoesz (WS) Interviewee: Mrs. Rachel Frydman (RF) This interview is in connection with the Wright State University Oral History Project. WS This is Oct 5, 1978. Now, Mrs. Frydman can you tell me where you were born? RF Yes, I was born in Kurzeniez, Poland. WS Can you spell that for me? RF Yes, KURZENIEZ. It is a small town. WS It is not the name that it has anymore, is it? RF No, it is the same name, even now. WS Did it always have that name? RF Yes, it always has had and always will have, I guess. WS Ok, and when were you born? RF In 1927. WS It must be in a district or region. RF Yes, it is near Wilaika, which is a bigger town. WS All right because there might be a number of places with that name. It was a small town then? RF Yes, a small town. WS Do you have a very clear memory of it? RF Yes, I remember this small town! I don't know how many people lived in it but there were about 100 Jewish families. WS About 100 Jewish families and how many others? RF Probably the same. About half and half. WS You lived there until 1939 or 1940? RF We lived there really until 1942. In 1939, the war started in Poland. Half of Poland was taken over by the Germans and the Russians took over the other half of the country. So we had Communists for almost 2 years. WS So this is east of Warsaw, some distance? RF Oh, it is far to the east. It is really White Russia. Close to our neighborhood, it is already Lithuania but we were White Russians. WS So the other people living in that town were Russians not Poles? RF Yes, they were White Russians. That is, the Gentiles were White Russians. There were Protestants, as they are here, and then there were Catholics and then the Jews. They all lived in the same place, in the same area, in the same neighborhood. WS Did you travel much? Did you and your family travel to other places very much? RF No. When I was a child I don't remember any travelling at all. WS So you mostly stayed just there? RF Yes, we stayed in the same place. Well, when my father was younger, he travelled. He travelled a lot to Poland and to the border with Germany because he dealt with them. He dealt with cattle at that time. He supplied cattle for the German army because he spoke German. He dealt with that. He was in a partnership. WS Was that a business which he had? RF It was a business which he started when he got married. He started it after WWI in 1918. However, from what I remember from when I was a child, my father had a butchershop in our own hometown. For example, we lived in part of the same house to the rear and to the front of the house there was a butchershop. This was my father's business. WS Did you have any brothers and sisters? RF I have one brother and one sister who are alive, Thank "G-d.. It is my only brother who came to visit me now from Israel and my sister lives in Israel. We all went through the war in different places. WS Did you know about each other at the time? RF No! No, we did not. We found each other after the war. My sister ran away from the front in 1941. The Russians went and she went with them just to get away from the Germans. We knew in 1941 that the Germans were coming, so she went with the Russian people. The Russian people went. The real Russians who came over from Russia and stayed, they were working there. The Russian government had sent them to all the parts of the country from 1939 to 1941. At that time she went with the Russians she went with some friends of ours. A lot of people from our hometown went. We couldn't go. We started out and we heard that the German army was already ahead of us. WS So you just went back home? RF We went back home and we settled and waited for what ever would happen to happen; I, my mother, and my brother. My father died just exactly the day the war started on Sep 01, 1939 and he knew that Hitler was already on his way to part of the country of Poland. WS So he died and was buried. RF He was buried the right way. Everything might be considered normal with the funeral, so to say. Then we were in Sept. 1941, no Oct. the Russians had taken over until June 22, 1941. That is when the war started, when the Germans started the war with Russia. It took maybe 10 days until the Germans were there. When we saw the first German military units, that is when the army units and the officers came into our small town. It was all mixed up. People didn't know where to go, what it was all about. We knew that Hitler was bad for us, especially for the Jews, but we waited until time gave us some indications. The local people, really they started to loot like during all the wars, but especially our houses. They got whatever they could. WS Even while you were there? RF Yes. We were there, we had a family coming from another small town, visiting. They were not just friends, they were relatives really. When they came, they had a lot of luggage. They brought luggage with them. They came by horse and buggy. So we had the whole house full with packages and the people started to loot. People came into the house from all around the little small towns, even smaller villages (then the one we lived in) farmers even some who didn't live in villages, they came to the small towns to loot. My mother recognized one person whom she had known and she talked to him by his name. She said: 'why, this is mine, take mine but don't take from these people, they just left home. They tried to run, they didn't know where to go.' People just ran; they didn't know where to go. He got so mad that he broke my mother's arm. It was already hard to get a doctor. On the second day my mother thought that it was broken and she felt that she couldn't move it. It was also swollen. So she went to a doctor and the doctor put her in a cast. She had that cast for 6 weeks. When the German army came, they made up the “Kommandatur” (military command place). They organized the local police that means local people to maintain order. At that time, they didn't tell them what to do with the Jews. Everybody continued to live in their own room and house. What they asked from this local police committee was all the best of all the belongings such as gold or diamonds or pearls. You know, we had skins to make furs, like skins from sheep, we had to give it up. So much money had to be collected. Especially from the Jews, not from the Gentile people, just from the Jews, as a contribution for the German army. It had to be paid otherwise they would take a few Jews and they would kill them. What could we do? We gave. We brought it to one point which they had designated as the place where we had to bring it. We brought it and it was collected. Then the real problems started. They put out a call. All of the Jewish men and boys had to assemble at one certain place, it was in the market place of the small town. The market place was the center of the town. There were stores and places where most Jews lived all around this market place. That was so, because the Jews had the stores and the businesses. In that center of the small town, they gathered them all together for a whole day. They told them what they had to do in a day and they had to work and if they didn't obey, they were going to be killed. If someone turned their head, there was a soldier right there and he just shot him. So they had to obey (the Germans). Then they left it all up to the local police. The local police did whatever they wanted to do, even if it was wrong and they really did a lot.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) Blog: What Are the Prospects for the Polish Left? Page 1 of 4
    LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) Blog: What are the prospects for the Polish left? Page 1 of 4 What are the prospects for the Polish left? Poland’s communist successor party has seen its opinion poll ratings increase in recent months. This upturn in support came after the revival of debates about the country’s communist past prompted by government legislation affecting the interests of its core electorate. But as Aleks Szczerbiak writes, the party’s leadership has failed to develop any new ideas or initiatives that can attract broader support beyond this declining group of former communist regime beneficiaries and functionaries. Without a political game-changer, the left will remain a marginal actor in Polish politics. Image from a Democratic Left Alliance campaign event ahead of the 2014 European Parliament elections, Credit: Democratic Left Alliance For most of the post-1989 period, the most powerful political and electoral force on the Polish left was the communist successor Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), which governed the country from 1993-97 and 2001-5. However, the Alliance has been in the doldrums since its support collapsed in the 2005 parliamentary election following a series of spectacular high-level corruption scandals. It contested the most recent October 2015 election – won decisively by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, the first political grouping in post-communist Poland to secure an outright parliamentary majority – as part of the ‘United Left’ (ZL) electoral coalition in alliance with the ‘Your Movement’ (TR) grouping. The latter was an anti-clerical social liberal party led by controversial businessman Janusz Palikot, which came from nowhere to finish third with just over 10% of the votes in the 2011 election but failed to capitalise on this success and saw its support decline steadily.
    [Show full text]
  • Folder 14 Poland, Vol. 1
    --- ,· . ' - ~~ -----1.- Via Diploma.tic Pouch. v' ./ Mr. Van Arsdale Turner, Acting Asst. Director, Civilian Relief, Insular & Foreign Operations, American Red Crose, National Headquarters, Washington, D.c. Dear Van: Reverting to your letter of March 17 and 9J1l' reply of April Y, on the subject of the copy O!/the current report on the work of the Joint Relief Commission in Poland which you desired to receive, the London Committee of the International Red Cross have now been able to furnish us with copies of the following reports, which please find enclosed herewith: Join{ Relief Commission of the International Red Cross, a~~va, Distribution of medical supplies to.Poland, 11 Comporel S JDent", 1942-1943. v v Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross, Geneva,. Med~aments Envois en Pologne 1942-1943. "" -~ The I.R.CoC. inform us that a copy of the report of the Joint Relief Commission in Poland was sent direatiy to you from Geneva on March 1.4. ~"fil:rr~ / William L. Gower, Director of Civilian Re.lief. RW. .• . OFTHi;i rn"iEi~ATIQ~AL RIBD CROSS International Heid Gross Committee - 4, Cours des Bastions1 - PHARMACEUTICAL SERVICE ...;. MEDICAL SUPPLIES i. '' ShipmentR into Poland. Typed on slip '~ttached to this page. In order tlnt ,,'co may oc; Hble to fill in the gaps which are apparent, in thi:c tre1o,tl:c<?, >;7 :ih~~ll oe very grC1.teful if you ~till com~nunicate any additional in !'orma ti on, wi;ich you rrmy possess. un following page, SUMMARY \ Pages1 I. Introductory Note 1 & 2 ,\\ \ II. Resume of Shipments: \ ·\ .
    [Show full text]
  • How They Lived to Tell 1939-1945 Edith Ruina
    How They Lived to Tell 1939-1945 Together members of a Jewish youth group fled from Poland to Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania and Palestine Edith Ruina Including selections from the written Recollection of Rut Judenherc, interviews and testimonies of other survivors. © Edith Ruina May 24, 2005 all rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published 2005 Mixed Media Memoirs LLC Book design by Jason Davis [email protected] Green Bay,Wisconsin CONTENTS Acknowledgment ..............................................................................v Chapter 1 Introduction ......................................................................1 Chapter 2 1939-1942 ......................................................................9 1. The People in this Story 2. The Situation of Jews in Poland Chapter 3 1939-1942 Poland..........................................................55 Before and After the German Occupation Chapter 4 1943 Poland ..................................................................87 Many Perished—Few Escaped Chapter 5 1943-44 Austria............................................................123 Chapter 6 1944 Hungary..............................................................155 Surviving in Hungary Chapter 7 1944-1945 ..................................................................205 Romania en route to Palestine Chapter 8 Palestine ......................................................................219 They Lived to Tell v Chapter 9 ....................................................................................235
    [Show full text]
  • The October 2015 Polish Parliamentary Election
    An anti-establishment backlash that shook up the party system? The october 2015 Polish parliamentary election Article (Accepted Version) Szczerbiak, Aleks (2016) An anti-establishment backlash that shook up the party system? The october 2015 Polish parliamentary election. Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 18 (4). pp. 404-427. ISSN 1570-5854 This version is available from Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/63809/ This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies and may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher’s version. Please see the URL above for details on accessing the published version. Copyright and reuse: Sussex Research Online is a digital repository of the research output of the University. Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. To the extent reasonable and practicable, the material made available in SRO has been checked for eligibility before being made available. Copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk An anti-establishment backlash that shook up the party system? The October 2015 Polish parliamentary election Abstract The October 2015 Polish parliamentary election saw the stunning victory of the right-wing opposition Law and Justice party which became the first in post-communist Poland to secure an outright parliamentary majority, and equally comprehensive defeat of the incumbent centrist Civic Platform.
    [Show full text]
  • EUROPEAN ELECTIONS in the V4 from Disinformation Campaigns to Narrative Amplification
    Strategic Communication Programme EUROPEAN ELECTIONS IN THE V4 From disinformation campaigns to narrative amplification 1 AUTHORS Miroslava Sawiris, Research Fellow, StratCom Programme, GLOBSEC, Slovakia Lenka Dušková, Project Assistant, PSSI, Czech Republic Jonáš Syrovátka, Programme Manager, PSSI, Czech Republic Lóránt Győri, Geopolitical Analyst, Political Capital, Hungary Antoni Wierzejski, Member of the Board, Euro-Atlantic Association, Poland GLOBSEC and National Endowment for Democracy assume no responsibility for the facts or opinions expressed in this publication or their subsequent use. The sole responsibility lies with the authors of this report. METHODOLOGY Data were collected between 10.4.2019 and 29.5.2019 from 15 relevant Facebook pages in each V4 country based on the following criteria: local experts and publicly available sources (such as blbec.online) identified Facebook channels that often publish disinformation content. In the selection of Facebook pages, those openly affiliated with a specific political party were omitted, including the Facebook pages of individual candidates. The data were filtered using different forms of the term “election” in local languages and the term “euro”, and then labelled based on the sentiment toward relevant political parties and the most prevalent narratives identified. © GLOBSEC GLOBSEC, Bratislava, Slovakia June 2019 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 4 Czechia 4 Hungary 4 Poland 4 Slovakia 4 ACTIVITY OF THE MONITORED CHANNELS ACROSS THE V4 REGION 6 Intensity of the campaigns 6
    [Show full text]
  • Law and Justice's Stunning Victory in Poland Reflected Widespread
    blogs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2015/11/02/law-and-justices-stunning-victory-in-poland-reflected-widespread-disillusionment-with-the- countrys-ruling-elite/ Law and Justice’s stunning victory in Poland reflected widespread disillusionment with the country’s ruling elite What does the recent parliamentary election in Poland tell us about the country’s politics? Aleks Szczerbiak writes that the victory secured by the right-wing opposition party Law and Justice stemmed from widespread disillusionment with Poland’s ruling elite. He notes that the usual strategy employed by the ruling party, Civic Platform, of trying to mobilise the ‘politics of fear’ against Law and Justice was not successful this time. The election result heralds major changes on the political scene including a leadership challenge in Civic Platform, the emergence of new ‘anti-system’ and liberal political forces in parliament, and a period of soul searching for the marginalised Polish left. Poland’s October 25th parliamentary election saw a stunning victory for the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, previously the main opposition grouping. The party increased its share of the vote by 7.7 per cent – compared with the previous 2011 poll – to 37.6 per cent, securing 235 seats in the 460-member Sejm, the more powerful lower house of the Polish parliament. This made Law and Justice the first political grouping in post-communist Poland to secure an outright parliamentary majority. At the same time, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), the outgoing ruling party led by prime minister Ewa Kopacz, suffered a crushing defeat, seeing its vote share fall by 15.1 per cent to only 24.1 per cent and number of seats drop to 138.
    [Show full text]
  • The 2015 Elections to the Senate of the Republic of Poland
    Polish Political Science Yearbook vol. 45 (2016), pp. 205–218 DOI: 10.15804/ppsy2016016 PL ISSN 0208-7375 Krystyna Leszczyńska Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin (Poland) The 2015 Elections to the Senate of the Republic of Poland Abstract: The discussion about justification for the very existence of Senate, as it was the case in previous years, also took place prior to the 2015 parliamentary elections. Postulates for the second chamber of parliament to be abolished are the inseparable element of election campaigns in Poland. Announcements of total abolishment or change of: form, competencies or number and the election prin- ciples for members of Senate, although they found their expression in the 2015 election programs of some of the political parties, but they were never applied after elections. The single member Senate constituencies secured seats almost ex- clusively for candidates supported by one of the two strongest political parties, that is the Law and Justice (PiS) and the Civic Platform (PO). Even if in the result of 25 October 2015 elections four independent candidates were elected for senators, three of them used support of political parties, using a rule well proven four years earlier: there is not senator without a political party protector. The 40% support for PiS which turned into 61% of seats indicates that the election system for Senate leads to overrepresentation of election winners. Keywords: Senate; election campaign; single member constituencies; deformation of election result; overrepresentation of the winning party Introduction The analysis of the 2015 Senate election campaign aims at verification of two hy- potheses. First of the assumes that the announcements of abolishment or change of Senate’s character are solely an element of pre-election strategy and in those catego- ries we may perceive the votes that negate the justification for its very existence.
    [Show full text]
  • 47390NCJRS.Pdf
    If you have issues viewing or accessing this file, please contact us at NCJRS.gov. ~~--- -- -----~ --- I I ~I EXECUTIVE TIWNING PROGRAM I IN ADVANCED CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRACTICES I I I I I I I ·1 I I CJG I I cr­ I, (Yj ,I [ vnnns ilL ;Y TRANSFER .. )F LAW ENFORCEMENT I iTiCE ::1 SISTANCE ADMINISTRATION I MENT OF JUSTICE o o J! CI '(~b----------~~----------~, I I I I Office of Technology Transfer National Institute of Law Enforcement I and Criminal Justice , Law Enforcement Assistance Administration \ I United States Department of Justice I I, RAPE AND ITS'VICTIMS MANUAL I by Mary L. Keefe 'I Jayne T. Rich Emilio Viano I Ann W. Burgess I I ;:1 Prepared by: UNIVERSITY RESEARCH CORPORATION I This manual was supported by Contract J-LEAA-022-76 awarded by the La~ Enforcement Assistance Administration, U.S. Department of Justice, under the ~libus Crime ,I Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, as amended. Points ot view or oprnions stated in this document are thos.e"Of the authors and do not n~.ces!3arily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of JJ~~ice. ' I The Law Enforcement Assistanoe Administratic;m reserves the r:tght to reproduce, publish, translate, or otherwise use, and to authorize others to publish and use all or any part of the copyrighted material contained itt.) 'this publication. Copyright 1977 by University Research Corporation EXECUTIVE TRAINING PROGRAM _______---- ________ IN ADVANCED CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRACTICES ____--""'--~-----' I, t I I I I I ,I I I I I .
    [Show full text]
  • Sources of Party System Final
    DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES EUI Working Papers SPS 2011/01 DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Sources of Party System Institutionalization in New Democracies: Lessons from East Central Europe Fernando Casal Bértoa EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE , FLORENCE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Sources of Party System Institutionalization in New Democracies: Lessons from East Central Europe FERNANDO CASAL BÉRTOA EUI W orking Paper SPS 2011/01 This text may be downloaded for personal research purposes only. Any additional reproduction for other purposes, whether in hard copy or electronically, requires the consent of the author(s), editor(s). If cited or quoted, reference should be made to the full name of the author(s), editor(s), the title, the working paper or other series, the year, and the publisher. ISSN 1725-6755 © 2011 Fernando Casal Bértoa Printed in Italy European University Institute Badia Fiesolana I – 50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI) Italy www.eui.eu cadmus.eui.eu Abstract Building on Casal Bértoa and Mair´s (2010) work on the institutionalization of post-communist party systems and as a response to their uneasiness with the failure of the party politics literature to determine what causes party system institutionalization in the first place, this paper addresses the following question: what are the sources of party system institutionalization in post-communist East Central Europe? In particular, what is it that explains the institutionalization of the Hungarian and Czech party systems in clear contrast to those of Slovakia and Poland, which are considered weak and under-institutionalized, respectively? Keywords Party system institutionalization; East Central Europe; parliamentary fragmentation; type of regime; cleavage Acknowledgments I am very grateful to Prof.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Senate
    NOTES ON THE SENATE CHANCELLERY OF THE SENATE 6, WIEJSKA STR. | 00-902 WArSAW Essential statistics about the Senate TEL. 48 22 694 90 34 | fAx 48 22 694 93 06 [email protected] www.senat.gov.pl of the First-to-Ninth Terms www.facebook.com/SenatRP Data on the work of the senate The Senate of the Third Polish Republic has been in existence for over 30 years. During that time, its composition changed 10 times. Analysing data on the work of senators of particular terms of office, one should remember that three of them were much shorter than the four other terms. The Sen- ate of the First Term worked from June 1989 to November 1991, the Senate of the Second Term – from November 1991 to May 1993 and the Senate of the Sixth Term – from October 2005 to November 2007. The remaining terms of office lasted four years each. This had a fundamental effect on the number of sittings and other statistical data on the work of the Senate. The Senate of the First Term held 61 sessions (lasting 90 days in total) and its committees held 882 sessions. The Senate of Second Term held 40 ses- sions (69 days) and its committees held 736 sessions. During the Third Term, 107 sessions (177 days) of the Senate and 2,519 sessions of its com- mittees took place. The Senate of the Fourth Term held 90 sessions (188 days) and its committees held 2,000 sessions. During the Fifth Term, there were 88 sessions (175 days) of the Senate and 2,367 sessions of its commit- tees.
    [Show full text]
  • Poland: a Skirmish Before the Decisive Battle Michał Kotnarowski and Mikolaj Czesnik
    Poland: A skirmish before the decisive battle michał kotnarowski and mikolaj czesnik introduction Elections to the European Parliament (EP) in Poland took place on Sunday, May 26th 2019. As in 2014-2015, they were part of a long ‘election marathon’ during which Poles elected their representatives in local government (October-November 2018), MEPs (May 2019), MPs and senators to the national parliament (most likely Octo- ber 2019) and the President (most likely May 2020). Such serial electoral contests have several precedents, as this is the fourth time it has happeneds in the history of EP elections in Poland. The circumstance is not without consequences. The 2019 EP Polish elections are one of the skirmishes in the long ‘electoral wa- r’of 2018-2020 among the main protagonists of Polish politics. Because of this, the- se elections had primarily a national character. The political discourse was prima- rily concerned with domestic and internal issues (discussed in detail below); EU and European issues were invisible. In this sense, the 2019 European Parliament elec- tions in Poland were typical second-order elections (Reif and Schmitt, 1980). Poli- ticians defined them – and voters accepted this definition – as a tool of domestic po- litics, serving political accountability and aggregating the interests of particular seg- ments of the electorate. main actors and electoral campaign In the 2019 European Parliament Elections in Poland, only six national committe- es – which submit lists in all constituencies – were registered. This is the smallest num- ber in the history of EP elections in Poland; never before have so few (national) elec- toral committees registered lists in all the constituencies.
    [Show full text]
  • Poland Chooses Between Two Right-Wing Politicians
    Poland Chooses between Two Right-Wing Politicians Polish President Andrzej Duda (top) flashing V-signs after addressing supporters as exit poll results were announced during the presidential election in Lowicz, Poland, on June 28, 2020 and Candidate in Poland’s presidential election, Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski flashing V-signs to supporters as exit poll results were announced during the presidential election in Warsaw, Poland, on June 28, 2020. – Poland’s right-wing President Andrzej Duda topped round one of a presidential election on June 28, 2020, triggering a tight run-off with Warsaw’s liberal Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski on July 12, according to an Ipsos exit poll. (Photos by Wojtek RADWANSKI and JANEK SKARZYNSKI / AFP) In less than few days there will be a second round of a presidential election in Poland that may affect not only the politics in Poland but also other regions of Europe. Poles are choosing between two right-wing politicians. What is the cause of this situation and what role does the left play in all of it? It is easier to understand current situation in Poland if you are a Canadian or American than a European. Most of European countries got used to a power structure with at least several strong political parties, including a strong left. For more than 15 years in Poland two right-wing parties have been taking turns in charge: Law and Justice and Civic Platform. The first one – after having won the parliamentary election in 2015 – has thoroughly dominated almost the entire Polish political stage: they have had a president, a prime minister and a majority in the parliament.
    [Show full text]