Abstract
NOVEMBER 18, 1945. I left by bus for Wrocław on the morning of November 14. A Jewish woman with a stentorian voice—typical of a certain type of former Lwów, now Warsaw, Jewess—talked the whole time, that is, from 8 am to 6 pm, without interruption except to alternate her verbal onslaught with singing. The bus was packed so I had to sit on my suitcase the whole way. It was a great relief when the bus made a rest stop in Opole, and I could have a glass of tea. I learned later that while I was drinking tea in the restaurant, its owner’s apartment was being stripped bare by thieves.
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Notes
- 1.
Tadeusz Konopiński (1894–1965), professor of zoology at Wrocław University. Specialized in animal husbandry.
- 2.
Moscovites, or Russians more generally. See also Chapter 13 of Volume 1.
- 3.
Later renamed Orłowski Street. Bronisław Knaster shared the house at 15 Orłowski Street with the Steinhauses. Note added by Roman Duda, editor of the second Polish edition
- 4.
“Deer Mountain”, a city in Lower Silesia, south-western Poland, close to the Karkonosze (in Czech, Krkonoše) mountain range, forming part of the Polish-Czech border.
- 5.
Mieczysław Kofta, director inter alia of Polish Radio in Wrocław, and his wife Maria, teacher of German at the university.
- 6.
- 7.
Plac Grunwaldzki, named after the victorious battle fought by Poland-Lithuania against the Teutonic Knights in 1410, is a large square and transit hub in Wrocław. During the siege of Breslau (Wrocław) by the Red Army in 1945 the entire surrounding residential district was razed by the Germans in order to build an airfield. Soviet airstrikes killed thousands of the forced laborers working on the airstrip.
- 8.
“Only no talking” (German).
- 9.
Witold Grabowski (1902–1963), professor at Wrocław University and later at the Academy of Medicine in Gdańsk. Expert in radiology.
- 10.
That is, a document entitling the author to take up residence there.
- 11.
Czesław Wycech (1899–1977), Polish politician and historian. As a member of the Polish Underground Government during World War II, he was responsible for organizing underground education. Minister of Education in the Provisional Government of National Unity 1945–1947.
- 12.
“truth”
- 13.
Wilbur Augustus Sawyer (1879–1951), American bacteriologist and public health administrator. Developed the first effective vaccine against yellow fever.
- 14.
Maurycy Bloch, a friend of Steinhaus’s daughter involved in the financial side of the publication of Mathematical Snapshots. See below.
- 15.
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery (1887–1976) commanded the British 8th Army from August 1942 in the Western Desert, and then in Sicily and Italy, before being given overall responsibility for planning the D-Day invasion of Normandy in June 1944. After the initial assault he commanded the 21st Army Group for the remainder of the campaign in north-western Europe.
- 16.
Sir Alexander Fleming (1881–1955), Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. Discovered penicillin in 1928. Nobel laureate for medicine in 1945.
- 17.
Jan Bohdan Dembowski (1889–1963), Polish biologist. President of the Polish Academy of Sciences 1952–1956.
- 18.
Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK), Poland’s state-owned bank.
- 19.
Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (National Armed Forces), an anti-Soviet, anti-German paramilitary organization. See also e.g. Chapter 12 of Volume 1.
- 20.
The stellated pentagon.
- 21.
The red star emblem of the Red Army.
- 22.
The Central Limit Theorem.
- 23.
Henryk Schärf (1907–2006), Polish mathematician from the interwar Lwów school of mathematics. Spent the war years in Zürich, where he obtained his Ph.D. In 1947 Zygmunt Birnbaum, then at the University of Washington, Seattle, helped him obtain a position there.
- 24.
Substances causing particles to adhere together in a mass.
- 25.
Hugon Kowarzyk (1906–1985), Polish physician and physiopathologist. Came to Wrocław in 1945 to help organize the Faculty of Medicine. Head of the Department of General and Experimental Pathology of the university 1946–1949, and Dean of the Medical Faculty 1947–1948. President of the Wrocław Scientific Society 1974–1985.
- 26.
A fluorescent tube?
- 27.
Polish Red Cross (Polski Czerwony Krzyż or PCK).
- 28.
Then at the University of Toronto.
- 29.
The daughter of the author’s sister-in-law Dittersdorfowa, then in France.
- 30.
Barbara Zglińska, daughter of Steinhaus’s sister Irena.
- 31.
Zosia and Lola are daughters of the Cieluchs, at whose farm near Stróże the author and his wife stayed for most of the war.
- 32.
Wincenty Rzymowski (1883–1950), Polish politician and writer. From 1945 Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government of National Unity.
- 33.
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement named for its understanding of God as one person, separate from Jesus, in contrast to Trinitarianism, which takes God to be three persons coexisting cosubstantially. The first Unitarians appeared in Poland-Lithuania and Transylvania in the 1540s.
- 34.
During World War II, Eustachy Żyliński worked in the underground Lwów University (1941–1944). Appointed Consul General to Ukraine in 1946. Head of the mathematics department at the Silesian Institute of Technology 1946–1951.
- 35.
A combined museum, library, and publishing house opened in Lwów in 1927. In Poland its library was second in size only to the Jagiellonian Library.
- 36.
Steinhaus’s nickname when a Gymnasium student.
- 37.
Władysław Bieńkowski (1906–1991) was a Polish communist activist during World War II, after which he joined the Department of Education. He later became a critic of “real socialism” and was removed from the PZPR.
- 38.
Founded in 1945 by professors from the Lwów Polytechnic forced to leave Lwów and move to the newly acquired Polish territories.
- 39.
Cypra Cecilia Krieger-Dunaij (1894–1974), Polish mathematician of Jewish descent. Born in Jasło, from 1920 she lived and worked in Toronto, obtaining her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1930.
- 40.
A city in central Ukraine. An important metallurgical center.
- 41.
“The Book”
- 42.
Army deserters hiding out in the woods. The term “green cadre” was originally used for Croatian deserters from the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I.
- 43.
Solice Zdrój, now Szczawno Zdrój, a spa town in Lower Silesia.
- 44.
Mieczysław Warmus (1918–2007), Polish mathematician. Participated in the Warsaw Uprising. Later mathematics professor at Wrocław Polytechnic, Warsaw University, and the University of Wollongong, Australia.
- 45.
A bout with encephalitis which in the event did not affect his cognitive abilities or memory.
- 46.
From 1945 to 1947 he was at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1947 he moved to the University of Chicago.
- 47.
“It is not true.”
- 48.
Iran, under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Shah, had been occupied by Britain and the USSR in 1941 to ensure a transportation route for vital supplies to the USSR during the war. The Allies had agreed to withdraw from Iran within six months of the end of the war, but Stalin maintained Red Army troops there beyond the deadline, and local pro-Soviet Iranians proclaimed the separatist “Azerbaijan People’s Government”. The Soviets withdrew only on March 24, 1946. Considered the first major conflict of the growing Cold War.
- 49.
In 1942, as an expert anthropologist, linguist, and statistician, Czekanowski convinced German “race experts” that, although professing Judaism and using Hebrew as a liturgical language, the Karaim people living in Poland and Lithuania were of Turkic origin, thereby saving them from extermination.
- 50.
A card game played between two hands, the “player’s” and the “banker’s”, with the higher score winning.
- 51.
Przekrój (Cross-section) was a Polish weekly newsmagazine established in Kraków in 1945, reporting on current social, political, and cultural events, and observing high intellectual standards. It was the most popular magazine in Poland until the 1980s.
- 52.
“Still not enough!”
- 53.
Governor of the voivodeship, or province.
- 54.
Presumably the author is referring here to the deferential tone of the conversations.
- 55.
Town in central Lower Silesia.
- 56.
Now a suburb of Zabrze, a city in Upper Silesia.
- 57.
Polish medical researcher. In 1925 appointed Professor of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Lwów. After working for some time at the Military Hospital of Lwów during the invasion of 1939, he escaped to Britain. From 1941 to 1946 professor of pharmacology in the Polish Medical School in Edinburgh. Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Alexandria 1949–1963. Lived from 1893 to 1965.
- 58.
Perhaps this refers to Koskowski’s attitudes during the periods of student unrest between the wars, in particular their agitation for the segregation of Jewish students in lecture halls.
- 59.
Town in southern Poland.
- 60.
Polska Partia Robotnicza (Polish Workers’ Party), the Polish communist party 1942–1948. Merged with the Polish Socialist Party in 1948 to form the Polish United Workers’ Party, thenceforth the ruling party of communist Poland.
- 61.
May 3 had been an official Polish holiday (“Constitution Day”) since the adoption of the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791 by the Great Sejm of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Historians have called it the “world’s second oldest written constitution” since it was preceded only by the US Constitution, which went into effect in 1789. The May 3 holiday was banned during the partitions of Poland and during World War II. Postwar, anti-communist demonstrations were sometimes organized on this day, with the result that from 1951 to 1980 the Third of May was removed from the list of Polish national holidays.
- 62.
A city in Lower Silesia about 70 km southwest of the regional capital Wrocław.
- 63.
Spa town in the province (voivodeship) of Subcarpathia, near Krosno, which is about 21 km from Jasło.
- 64.
The border with Ukraine lies about 85 km to the east of Krosno.
- 65.
A former Göttingen professor.
- 66.
“Even if we don’t bear the guilt, we still bear the shame.” (German).
- 67.
George Eugene Uhlenbeck (1900–1988), Dutch-American theoretical physicist. Student of Ludwig Boltzmann, the founder of statistical mechanics. Left Holland for the US in 1927.
- 68.
Norbert Wiener (1894–1964), American mathematician. Founded “cybernetics”, a formalization of the notion of feedback, with many implications for engineering, control systems, biology, philosophy, and social organization.
- 69.
See Chapter 7 of Volume 1.
- 70.
This refers to the discussion of vaccines against tuberculosis in Chapter 7 of Volume 1.
- 71.
A weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal, one of the world’s oldest and most respected. Founded in Britain in 1823.
- 72.
A friend of the author’s daughter Lidka.
- 73.
At that time, because of the lack of progress towards free elections, the US government was vacillating over making additional loans to Poland over and above the relief provided by the UNRRA. Eventually the loans were made, but the US ambassador to Poland, Arthur Bliss Lane (1894–1956), ultimately resigned in protest (in February 1947) over what he considered a too soft approach to Stalin by the Western Allies, subsequently writing a book on the subject entitled I Saw Poland Betrayed.
- 74.
Stanisław Bańczyk, high-ranking member of the Polish People’s Party. “Right-hand man” of Mikołajczyk, the former Prime Minister of the Polish Government-in-Exile, who escaped back to the West in 1947, followed in 1948 by Bańczyk and Stanisław Wójcik.
- 75.
“Pins”, a weekly satirical magazine founded in 1935, constructively leftist before World War II and opposed to communism afterwards.
- 76.
“Mały słownik w obrazkach” (A Small Picture Dictionary), Szpilki 1946, No. 21 (May 21). Text by Sestertius, illustrations by Kazimierz Grus (1885–1955), cartoonist and illustrator, specializing in socio-political and moral caricature.
- 77.
In the Catholic Church the right to wear the mitre is confined by Canon Law to bishops and abbots. Other prelates may be granted permission to wear it as a special privilege.
- 78.
Now called Zolochiv, a town in the L′viv district of western Ukraine.
- 79.
An old cemetery on the outskirts of Lwów containing many elaborate and imposing monuments.
- 80.
Compare the list in Chapter 13 of Volume 1.
- 81.
Maria Grek, née Pareńska.
- 82.
Jadwiga Ostrowska.
- 83.
Adam Mięsowicz.
- 84.
Władysław Tadeusz Wisłocki (1887–1941), a Lwów librarian. He was arrested by the Nazis on July 11, 1941. His exact fate is unknown.
- 85.
Korowicz was murdered on July 12, 1941. See Chapter 9 of Volume 1.
- 86.
Bartel was murdered on July 26, 1941.
- 87.
Jerzy Kowalski (1893–1948), Polish writer and classical philologist. Professor at Lwów University and the University of Wrocław.
- 88.
Viktor Zakharovich Lebedev was ambassador to Poland from 1945 to 1951.
- 89.
Stefan Żółkiewski (1911–1991), Polish literary historian and critic. Co-founder of the Polish Workers’ Party. Editor-in-chief of the magazines Kuźnica (1945–1948) and Polityka (1957–1958).
- 90.
Hala Ludowa, also called Hala Stulecia (Centennial Hall), a historic building in Wrocław, built in 1911–1913. Listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2006.
- 91.
Igor′ Aleksandrovich Moiseyev (1906–2007), great 20th century choreographer of character dance.
- 92.
Karpf and Kramer were mentioned in Chapter 8 of Volume 1 as members of the Jasło intelligentsia.
- 93.
Tadeusz Mikulski (1909–1958), historian of Polish literature. Throughout World War II he lectured at the clandestine University of Warsaw, as well as serving in the Home Army. After the war he joined the university being organized in Wrocław.
- 94.
“Polish nation”
- 95.
Polish pediatrician and former professor at the University of Lwów. Between the wars the author collaborated with him on research into vaccines against tuberculosis. See Chapter 7 of Volume 1.
- 96.
One of those murdered in the “massacre of the Lwów professors” in July 1941.
- 97.
Władysław Gomułka (1905–1982), First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party, the ruling communist party of Poland, from 1956 to 1970. Played a leading role in the Polish underground during World War II. In 1945 he was appointed deputy premier of the provisional government, and later that year put in charge of the administration of all Polish lands taken over from Germany.
- 98.
Gustave Choquet (1915–2006), French mathematician. Worked in functional analysis, potential theory, topology, and measure theory.
- 99.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826), French lawyer and politician, famous as an epicure. His most famous work was Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste). Perhaps his best known mot was: “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.”
- 100.
An old acquaintance of the author’s.
- 101.
Andrzej Mycielski (1900–1993), Polish expert in constitutional law. Before World War II professor at Stefan Batory University in Wilno, from 1945 he participated in the establishment of Wrocław University. Also held a position at the Academy of Catholic Theology in Warsaw. Expelled from Wrocław University in 1951 for referring in print to the former Prime Minister of the Polish Government-in-Exile Stanisław Mikołajczyk, he was reinstated following the thaw of 1956. (According to another source, he was expelled for using the expression “the so-called People’s Poland”.)
- 102.
Jasło landowner, and co-owner, with the author’s father, of the brickworks in Jasło.
- 103.
An oilman from Jasło. See Chapter 1 of Volume 1.
- 104.
Perhaps this is the Halina who resided with her husband in the Steinhauses’ former Lwów home.
- 105.
Held from July 29 to October 15, 1946.
- 106.
An archipelago of twenty-three islands surrounding a central lagoon, forming part of the Marshall Islands. At the end of World War II the atoll came under the control of the US. Between 1946 and 1958 twenty-three nuclear devices were detonated at Bikini, resulting in the practically permanent uninhabitability of the atoll. In 1986 the Marshall Islands gained its independence.
- 107.
With whom the author and his wife took shelter periodically following the German entry into Lwów. See Chapter 10 of Volume 1.
- 108.
The author and his wife also found refuge with the Fulińskis after the German takeover of Lwów in 1941.
- 109.
Boris Vladimirovich Gnedenko (1912–1995), Soviet mathematician. Best known for his work with Kolmogorov in probability theory. Director of the Kiev Mathematics Institute from 1949. Mikhail Alekseevich Lavrentiev was first head of the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR 1957–1975. A. S. Kovan′ko, Soviet mathematician. Worked mainly in Fourier analysis.
- 110.
The Ostaszewskis were the owners of the boarding house “Ustronie” in Iwonicz, where the author holidayed as a boy. See Chapter 1 of Volume 1.
- 111.
From 1946 to 1949 a civil war was fought in Greece between the Democratic Army of Greece, supported by Britain and the US, and the military branch of the Greek Communist Party. The latter lost the war, partly as a result of withdrawal of Yugoslav support when the USSR broke off relations with Tito.
- 112.
Now called Szczytna.
- 113.
The author may have in mind the decision taken in July 1946 by the parliamentarian Karol Popiel, head of the Labor Party (Stronnictwo Pracy), to suspend his party’s political activities. Nevertheless, pro-communist members of the Labor Party remained active till 1950. Note added by Aleksandra Zgorzelska, editor of the first Polish edition
- 114.
A city in south-central Poland in the Łódź Voivodeship.
- 115.
A method for fairly dividing up a quantity between any number of people. See Chapter 12 of Volume 1.
- 116.
Son of Antoni Cieszyński.
- 117.
Polish communist activist, military journalist. Polish Minister of Culture in the 1950s. Lived from 1908 to 1999.
- 118.
Polish geophysicist, meteorologist, and explorer. Lived from 1872 to 1954.
- 119.
Polish economist. Professor at Warsaw University after World War II. From 1970 professor at the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, Holland. Lived from 1908 to 2000.
- 120.
Stanisław Turski (1906–1986), Polish mathematician. Rector of Gdańsk Polytechnic 1946–1949, and of Warsaw University 1952–1969. Member of the Legislative Sejm 1947–1952.
- 121.
Member of the Polish government 1947–1952. Member of the PPR and then the communist party.
- 122.
Jan Parnas, son of Jakub Karol Parnas.
- 123.
Former servant of the Blumenfelds.
- 124.
Visiting British physiologist. See above.
- 125.
Kommunisticheskiĭ Soyuz Molodezhi (Communist Union of Youth) (Russian).
- 126.
Czesław, son of Stefan Kempisty, the Polish mathematician who had perished in a Soviet prison in Wilno—see Chapter 13 of Volume 1.
- 127.
That is, from Ukraine or Belarus. The Bug flows along the border between Poland and these two countries (former republics of the USSR) before entering Poland proper and uniting with the Narew river.
- 128.
See Chapter 7 of Volume 1.
- 129.
One of Aesop’s fables: A wolf runs into a well fed dog, who explains that he is being fed by a man, his master. But when the wolf notices the dog’s neck is rubbed bare, and is told this is due to the iron collar his master makes him wear, he jeers at the dog for letting himself be treated this way.
- 130.
Andreĭ Aleksandrovich Zhdanov (1896–1948), Soviet politician. Active in the “great terror” of the 1930s. During World War II he was in charge of the defense of Leningrad. In 1946 he was appointed by Stalin to implement the Soviet Union’s cultural policy. His first action (in December 1946) was to censor Russian writers such as the poet Anna Akhmatova and the short story writer Mikhail Zoshchenko. Launched a purge of musicians in an effort to eliminate “formalism” from music. Organizer, in 1947, of the “Cominform”, designed to coordinate the activities of Europe’s communist parties.
- 131.
Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), Italian criminologist. Founder of the Italian school of “positivist criminology”, according to which potential criminals could be identified by physical defects confirming them as “savage” or “atavistic”.
- 132.
However her son Lev Gumilev was arrested in 1949, and she spent the next seven years, till his release, toeing the party line in the hope of protecting him from worse. (Her first husband Nikolaĭ Gumilev had been shot in 1921 for allegedly participating in an anti-Bolshevik conspiracy.)
- 133.
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890–1960), highly influential Russian poet, novelist, and translator of Goethe and Shakespeare. Narrowly avoided being purged by Stalin in the 1930s. In Russia he was best known for his anthology My Sister—Life, and outside Russia for his novel Doctor Zhivago. Nobel laureate for literature in 1957.
- 134.
French scientist, daughter of Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie. Awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry jointly with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie in 1935 for their discovery of artificial radioactivity.
- 135.
Stefan Pieńkowski (1883–1953), Polish physicist. Founder of the Warsaw school of experimental physics. Rector of the University of Warsaw 1925–1926, 1933–1936, and 1945–1947.
- 136.
Arnaud Denjoy (1884–1974), French mathematician specialising in differential equations and harmonic analysis. Choquet was one of his students.
- 137.
“Sur un problème de triades.” Comptes Rendus des Séances de la Société des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie. Classe III. Vol. 33–38 (1940–1945), pp. 13–16. The result in question states that, given any infinite set S, there exists a collection \(\mathcal{C}\) of three-element subsets of S with the property that each pair of elements of S is a subset of exactly one of the sets in \(\mathcal{C}\).
- 138.
For a short period after completing his studies in Göttingen, Steinhaus worked under the engineer Aleksander Dietzius at an oil refinery near Jasło. See Chapter 6 of Volume 1.
- 139.
Tadeusz Juliusz Kroński (1907–1958), Polish philosopher and historian of philosophy.
- 140.
Of the introvisor.
- 141.
Or Maurycy, or Moryś.
- 142.
That is, the famously intractable problem of determining the behavior of a system of three celestial bodies acting on each other via their gravitational fields.
- 143.
Vojtěch Jarník (1897–1970), Czech mathematician, working mainly in number theory and analysis.
- 144.
That is, to command the Soviet-backed Gwardia Ludowa fighting alongside the Red Army.
- 145.
The Newton Tercentenary Celebrations, 15–19 July, 1946.
- 146.
Newton was born on December 25, 1642 (New style: January 4, 1643). The Royal Society of London had planned a celebration of the tercentenary of Newton’s birth for 1942, but this had to be postponed because of the war, finally taking place in July 1946.
- 147.
Sergeĭ Ivanovich Vavilov (1891–1951), Soviet physicist. (In the published proceedings The Royal Society Newton Tercentenary Celebrations. July 1946. London 1947, pp. 43–45, there is an article entitled “Newton and the Atomic Theory” by Academician S. I. Vavilov, read on behalf of the author by Sir Henry Dale, F.R.S.)
- 148.
Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa (1894–1984), eminent Russian/Soviet physicist. Nobel laureate in 1978 for work in low temperature physics.
- 149.
Ivan Matveevich Vinogradov (1891–1983), outstanding Soviet analytic number theorist. Director of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics 1934–1941, 1946–1983. Rumored to be possessed of anti-Semitic tendencies. He is said to have been enormously strong.
- 150.
Professor at Poznań University 1919–1938 and 1946–1955. Connected, through a course in cryptology he gave starting in 1929, with the decrypting of the German “Enigma machine” ciphers.
- 151.
Zentralblatt für Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete, the German mathematics review journal.
- 152.
Andrzej Alexiewicz (1917–1995), Polish mathematician. Adherent of the interwar Lwów school of mathematics, in particular of Banach.
- 153.
In Polish Mikołaj Kopernik (1473–1543), first astronomer since the ancient Greeks to formulate a heliocentric cosmology, displacing the Earth from the center of the universe.
- 154.
Wincenty Styś (1903–1960), professor of economics at Wrocław University after World War II. Researcher in economic and social problems in rural areas.
- 155.
Joanna Guze (1917–2009), Polish translator, critic, and art historian. See also Chapter 13 of Volume 1.
- 156.
The semi-regular (Archimidean) solid in question is most often called the truncated octahedron. It is indeed the only convex polyhedron besides the cube which regularly tessellates 3-space by itself, in a configuration called the bitruncated cubic honeycomb. Its discoverer may have been Alfredo Andreini (1870–1943), who published a list of 25 tessellations by semi-regular solids in 1905.
- 157.
Presumably, a procedure for pinpointing the location of a hidden object.
- 158.
Mieczysław Jerzy Gamski (1913–1989), physician, cardiologist, and professor of medicine. Worked in Wrocław after World War II, where he achieved his Habilitation in 1951, after which he became head of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Lublin, moving to Gdańsk in 1957.
- 159.
Perhaps a prototype of the “vectorcardiograph”.
- 160.
Zbigniew Kubrakiewicz, professor at Wrocław University. Expert in radiology.
- 161.
A government agency charged with monitoring government departments and industries of national interest: sanitary systems, tax offices, construction, etc.
- 162.
Polish medical scientist and biologist. The author collaborated with him in experiments on leukocytes between the wars.
- 163.
Buchenwald concentration camp was established on the Ettersberg near Weimar in July 1937, one of the first and largest of the concentration camps on German soil. Ultimately it held prisoners from all over Europe and Russia: Jews, Poles, Slovenes, religious and political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, prisoners of war, and ordinary criminals, working mainly as forced labor in local armaments factories, and subject to the usual starvation diet, callous medical experimentation (such as the infecting of prisoners with typhus in order to test often ineffective vaccines), and mass killings.
- 164.
Kurt Alois Josef Johann Schuschnigg (1897–1977), Chancellor of the Austrian Republic 1934–1938. Opposed to the 1938 Anschluss, he was arrested and eventually interned, spending the war in various camps. Liberated in 1945, he spent most of the rest of his life in US Academia.
- 165.
SS rank equivalent to an army major.
- 166.
Thomas Bayes (1701–1761), English mathematician and Presbyterian minister, was the first to suggest the idea behind the theorem that now bears his name and is expressed by the formula \(P(A\vert B) = \frac{P(B\vert A)P(A)} {P(B)}\), where P(A | B) denotes the probability of event A given event B, etc.
- 167.
A Catholic monthly founded in 1922, and suppressed from 1952 to 1981. Published since 1927 in Niepokalanów, a monastery-shrine to the Virgin Mary in the Warsaw archdiocese.
- 168.
Antoni M. Żychiewicz, son of Emil Żychiewicz, a former school-mate of the author who became a bookseller.
- 169.
Witold Wolibner (1902–1961), Polish mathematician. Head of the Department of Theoretical Mechanics at Wrocław University from 1947.
- 170.
A celebrated modern Polish poet. See Chapter 7 of Volume 1.
- 171.
The fountain with its swordsman was installed in 1904 on University Square in Wrocław, after a design by Hugo Lederer.
- 172.
The decay process converting organic matter to a stable form, that is, to humus, such as occurs in composting.
- 173.
The Amnesty of 1947, passed in the Sejm on February 22, was directed at those continuing to be active in the anti-Soviet underground. Its actual purpose was the liquidation of coordinated resistance to the recently established communist regime. The promise of amnesty was, however, not kept, and interrogations of those who revealed themselves later led to new rounds of arrests and repression.
- 174.
Maurycy Zdzisław Jaroszyński (1880–1974), law professor at Warsaw University and member of the postwar Council of Higher Education concerned with educational reform.
- 175.
Jan Mikusiński (1913–1987), Polish mathematician. Known for his “operational calculus”, with applications to the solution of differential equations. Participated in underground high school teaching in Kraków during World War II. Obtained his doctorate at the Jagiellonian University in 1945, and habilitated at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin in 1946. Head of the Department of Mathematical Analysis at the University of Wrocław 1948–1955. Was at Warsaw University from 1955 to 1958. Concurrently with occupying these positions he worked at the Mathematical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Moved to Katowice in 1960.
- 176.
Known as “Mikusiński’s cube”.
- 177.
The feast day of a Christian saint for whom a child is named. For Wojciech Rogala it was April 23.
- 178.
The (Weak) Law of Large Numbers is the theorem of probability theory according to which, roughly speaking, the average result of an experiment repeated n times should tend to become closer to the expected value as \(n \rightarrow \infty \). For example, the average of n rolls of a fair die will settle near 3.5 with increasing n in the sense that for each \(\varepsilon > 0\), the probability that it differs from 3.5 by at least \(\varepsilon\) approaches zero as \(n \rightarrow \infty \).
- 179.
“Papa, give me a gun; I want to shoot a prisoner.”
- 180.
“swims in happiness”
- 181.
A range in Lower Silesia, in the central Sudeten Mountains.
- 182.
Witold Hurewicz, Polish mathematician. Moved to the US before World War II. Introduced exact sequences and the higher homotopy groups.
- 183.
A suburb of Wrocław.
- 184.
A reference to the Greek civil war 1946–1949.
- 185.
A village not far from Jasło.
- 186.
Gdynia America Line, a shipping company formed by the Polish Government in 1930 to operate cargo and passenger services between Gdynia, Copenhagen, Halifax, and New York. Suspended in 1939, the New York service resumed in 1947.
- 187.
Eugenia Krassowska-Jodłowska (1910–1986), Polish political activist and pedagogue. Deputy Minister of Education 1946–1950, Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Higher Education 1950–1951, and Secretary of State 1951–1965.
- 188.
Børge Christian Jessen (1907–1993), Danish mathematician. Noted for his work on the zeta function and Hilbert’s third problem. Professor at the University of Copenhagen 1942–1977.
- 189.
Possibly a misprint for Perron. Oskar Perron (1880–1975) was an outstanding German analyst who did indeed have run-ins with Nazi-friendly colleagues such as Bieberbach.
- 190.
A weekly published from 1945 to 1956 by a group of Catholic activists in support of communism in Poland.
- 191.
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), French Post-Impressionist painter. His art is said to form a bridge between Impressionism and early 20th century Cubism.
- 192.
Absinthe drinkers.
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Steinhaus, H. (2016). Wrocław. In: Burns, R., Szymaniec, I., Weron, A. (eds) Mathematician for All Seasons. Vita Mathematica, vol 19. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23102-0_2
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