Donald Tusk

Donald Franciszek Tusk (born 22 April 1957) is a Polish politician who has been Prime Minister of Poland since 2007. He was a co-founder and is chairman of the Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) party.

Tusk was officially designated as Prime Minister on 9 November 2007 and took office on 16 November. His cabinet won a vote of confidence in the Sejm on 24 November 2007. He is currently the longest serving prime minister of the Third Republic of Poland. In October 2011, Tusk's Civic Platform won a plurality of seats in the Polish parliamentary election, meaning that Tusk became the first Prime Minister to be re-elected since the fall of communism in Poland.

Tusk began his public career as an activist in his home town of Gdansk, supporting Solidarity and organizing his fellow university students. With the exception of one four-year stretch, Tusk has served in the Third Republic parliament almost continuously since its first elections in 1991. He was Vice Marshal (deputy speaker) of the Senate from 1997 to 2001 and Vice Marshal of the Sejm from 2001 to 2005. He also served as Leader of the Opposition from 2003 to 2007.

Studies and Personal Life

Tusk was born in Gdańsk. Tusk's father, also named Donald Tusk (1930–1972), was a carpenter. Donald Tusk's mother, Ewa Tusk (1934–2009), was a nurse. His uncle, Bronisław Tusk (1935–2000), was a sculptor from Gdańsk. His grandfather Józef Tusk (1907–1987) was a railway official who, as a former citizen of the Free City of Danzig, was compulsorily drafted by German Nazi authorities into the Wehrmacht on 2 August 1944. He deserted a few months later to join the Polish Army in the West on 24 November 1944.

Donald Tusk belongs to the Kashubian minority in Poland. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in December 2008, Tusk compared his own family history to the Jewish experience, describing the Kashubian minority as a people who, "like the Jews, are people who were born and live in border areas and were suspected by the Nazis and by the Communists of being disloyal".

Tusk graduated from the Mikołaj Kopernik (Nicolaus Copernicus) High School in Gdańsk in 1976. He then enrolled as a student of history at the University of Gdańsk, from which he graduated in 1980 under professor Roman Wapiński with an M.A. thesis on Józef Piłsudski.

Donald Tusk and his wife, Małgorzata, have two children: a son, Michał (b. 1982) and a daughter, Katarzyna (b. 1987). He also has one grandson, Mikołaj (b. 2009) by his son Michał. They reside in Sopot near Gdańsk.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Bronisław Komorowski

Bronisław Maria Komorowski (born 4 June 1952) is the President of Poland. As Marshal of the Sejm (Speaker of Parliament), Komorowski exercised powers and duties of head of state following the death of President Lech Kaczyński in a plane crash on 10 April 2010. Komorowski was the governing Civic Platform party's candidate in the resulting 2010 presidential election, which he won in the second round of voting on 4 July 2010. He was sworn in as fulltime President on 6 August 2010. Komorowski is thus the second person to serve on two occasions as the Polish head of state since 1918 after Maciej Rataj. Rataj, however, was twice Acting President, while Komorowski first acted as President, and then became elected President.

Komorowski was the Minister of Defence from 2000 to 2001.

Youth

Bronisław Maria Komorowski was born in Oborniki Śląskie. Komorowski is the son of Count Zygmunt Leon Komorowski (1925–1992) and Jadwiga Komorowska (née Szalkowska) (1921–).

The Komorowski family, which held the Korczak coat of arms, owned land in the Żywiec region of southern Poland, as well as properties in northern Lithuania in Aukštaitija, the ancestral home of Bronisław Komorowski's paternal branch. Its residence was in Kavoliškis manor (Rokiškis district). The family received the title of count from Matthias Corvinus, a 15th century King of Hungary. The title was later confirmed by the Austrian emperor.

From 1957 to 1959 he lived in Józefów near Otwock. From 1959 to 1966 he also attended elementary school in Pruszków. In 1966 he transferred to Warsaw and graduated from Cyprian Kamil Norwid High School no. 24.

For many years he was affiliated with the Scout Movement. He belonged to the 75th Mazovian Scout Team in Pruszków. During his studies he was a Scout instructor in 208 WDHiZ "Parasol" Battalion in Mokotów. He met his future wife through Scouting.

In 1977 he finished his studies in history at the University of Warsaw. From 1977 to 1980 was an editor at the journal "Słowo Powszechne."

Family

He has been married to Anna Dembowska since 1977. He has five children: Zofia Aleksandra (b. 1979), Tadeusz Jan (b. 1981), Maria Anna (b. 1983), Piotr Zygmunt (b. 1986) and Elżbieta Jadwiga (b. 1989).

He is a descendent of Polish nobility. He is distantly related to Princess Mathilde of Belgium, Duchess of Brabant, via her mother Anna Countess d'Udekem d'Acoz born Countess Komorowska.

from : www.wikipedia.org

Irena Sendler

Irena Sendler (née Krzyżanowska, commonly referred to as Irena Sendlerowa in Poland; 15 February 1910 – 12 May 2008) was a Polish Catholic social worker who served in the Polish Underground and the Żegota resistance organization in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II. Assisted by some two dozen other Żegota members, Sendler saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, providing them with false documents, and sheltering them in individual and group children's homes outside the Ghetto.

Early Life

Sendler was born as Irena Krzyzanowska on 15 February 1910 in Warsaw. Her father, Stanislaw Krzyzanowski, was a physician. Sendler sympathised with Jews from childhood. Her father died in February 1917 of typhus contracted while treating patients his colleagues refused to treat. Many of those patients were Jews . After his death, Jewish community leaders offered to pay for Sendler's education. She opposed the ghetto-bench system that existed at some prewar Polish universities and as a result was suspended from Warsaw University for three years.

World War II

During the German occupation of Poland, Sendler lived in Warsaw (prior to that, she had lived in Otwock and Tarczyn while working for urban Social Welfare departments). As early as 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland, she began aiding Jews. She and her helpers created over 3,000 false documents to help Jewish families, prior to joining the organized Żegota resistance and the children's division. Helping Jews was very risky—in German-occupied Poland, all household members risked death if they were found to be hiding Jews, a more severe punishment than in other occupied European countries.

In August 1943, Żegota (the Council to Aid Jews) nominated her (by her cover name Jolanta) to head its children's section. As an employee of the Social Welfare Department, she had a special permit to enter the Warsaw Ghetto to check for signs of typhus, something the Nazis feared would spread beyond the Ghetto. During these visits, she wore a Star of David as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people and so as not to call attention to herself.

She cooperated with others in Warsaw's Municipal Social Services department, and the RGO (Central Welfare Council), a Polish relief organization that was tolerated under German supervision. She and her co-workers organized the smuggling of Jewish children out of the Ghetto. Under the pretext of conducting inspections of sanitary conditions during a typhus outbreak, Sendler and her co-workers visited the Ghetto and smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and trams, sometimes disguising them as packages. She also used the old courthouse at the edge of the Warsaw Ghetto (still standing) as one of the main routes for smuggling out children.[citation needed]

The children were placed with Polish families, the Warsaw orphanage of the Sisters of the Family of Mary, or Roman Catholic convents such as the Little Sister Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Conceived Immaculate at Turkowice and Chotomów. Sendler cooperated very closely with social worker and catholic nun, mother provincial of Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary - Matylda Getter. She rescued between 250-550 Jewish children in different education and care facilities for children in Anin, Białołęka, Chotomów, Międzylesie, Płudy, Sejny, Vilnius and others. Some children were smuggled to priests in parish rectories. She and her co-workers buried lists of the hidden children in jars in order to keep track of their original and new identities. Żegota assured the children that, when the war was over, they would be returned to Jewish relatives.

In 1943, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo, severely tortured, and sentenced to death. Żegota saved her by bribing German guards on the way to her execution. She was listed on public bulletin boards as among those executed. For the remainder of the war, she lived in hiding, but continued her work for the Jewish children. After the war, she and her co-workers gathered together all of their records with the names and locations of the hidden Jewish children and gave them to their Zegota colleague Adolf Berman and his employees at the Central Committee of Polish Jews. However, almost all of their parents had been killed at the Treblinka extermination camp or had otherwise gone missing.

Awards

After the war and the Soviet takeover of Poland, Irena Sendler was persecuted by the communist Polish state authorities for her relations with the Polish government in exile and with the Home Army. During this period she miscarried her second child.

In 1965, Sendler was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous among the Nations. She also was awarded the Commander's Cross by the Israeli Institute. Only in that year did the Polish communist government allow her to travel abroad, to receive the award in Israel.

In 2003, Pope John Paul II sent Sendler a personal letter praising her wartime efforts. On 10 October 2003 she received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest civilian decoration, and the Jan Karski Award "For Courage and Heart," given by the American Center of Polish Culture in Washington, D.C.. She was also awarded the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta (November 7, 2001).

On 14 March 2007, Sendler was honored by Poland's Senate. At age 97, she was unable to leave her nursing home to receive the honor, but she sent a statement through Elżbieta Ficowska, whom Sendler had helped to save as an infant. Polish President Lech Kaczyński stated she "can justly be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize" (though nominations are supposed to be kept secret). On 11 April 2007, she received the Order of the Smile as the oldest recipient of the award.

In May 2009, Irena Sendler was posthumously granted the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award. The award, named in honor of the late actress and UNICEF ambassador, is presented to persons and organizations recognised for helping children. In its citation, the Audrey Hepburn Foundation recalled Irena Sendler's heroic efforts that saved 2,500 Jewish children during the German occupation of Poland in World War II.

Sendler was the last survivor of the Children's Section of the Żegota Council to Assist Jews, which she had headed from August 1943 until the end of the war.

Irena Sendler died in Warsaw on May 12, 2008.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Jan Kulczyk

Jan Kulczyk, born June 24, 1950, in Bydgoszcz, is a prominent Polish business oligarch. He is the owner of Kulczyk Holding with headquarters in Warsaw, and an international investment house Kulczyk Investments (former name: Kulczyk Investment House) with headquarters in Luxembourg and offices in London, Kiev and Dubai. According to the Wprost newspaper, his fortune is estimated at PLN 7.8 billion (approximately USD$ 2.4 billion). In 2006 ranked 756 among The World Richest People by Forbes with an estimated net worth of US$1 billion, disappeared from Forbes ranking in 2007 and 2008. In 2010 he emerged on the Forbes' list again, ranked No 463 with the estimated net worth US$2,1 billion. He is also at the top of the Richest Poles list 2010.

Education

Kulczyk is a law graduate of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań as well as a graduate of foreign trade at the University of Economics in Poznań. He holds a Ph.D. in international law. His business activities are a continuation of a family business tradition into the third generation.

Business Background

His father set up three companies after WW2, all of which were taken over by the communist state. In 1981, Kulczyk formed Interkulpol, one of the first companies with foreign capital in Poland. In 1988 he established the Kulczyk Tradex company, which was the only official dealer of Volkswagen and Audi in Poland. In 1991 Kulczyk Holding, a limited liability was established, and in 1993 it was transformed into a joint-stock company. Jan Kulczyk is the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the company. Kulczyk Holding belongs to the international investment group Kulczyk Investments (former name: Kulczyk Investment House), and manages the assets of the group in Poland. Completed investments include: PTC Era mobile operator (4.8% in 1993-1999, partnership with Deutsche Telekom Mobil Net GmbH), TPSA Polish telecom operator (47.5% acquired alongside France Telecom in privatisation deal and later sold to France Telecom), national oil refining and marketing PKN Orlen (nearly 5% in 2001-2005), TUiR Warta SA, an insurance company (70% gradually sold to KBC) and PTE Dom pension fund (50% disposed to KBC).

From : www.wikipedia.org