Abstract
In our house we found my Mother, one of my sisters with her two daughters and the fianc´e of the younger one, my wife’s uncle L. G., our maid, and our third-floor tenant Mrs. Kwaśniewska. We were all to be dining together for some time to come. Next day I went to the university, where chaos reigned. The gates were under guard by young men wearing red armbands and armed with rifles. The majority of them were from the National Radical Camp, and appeared to consider the red armband the most practical disguise—despite which many of them were later unmasked.
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Notes
- 1.
Leon Gr¨unwald, alias Leon Zielony.
- 2.
In Polish: Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny (ONR), a Polish extreme right-wing, anti-Semitic, anti-communist, nationalist party formed in 1934 mostly by young radicals from the National party or the Movement for National Democracy. Its members instigated pogroms and other anti-Jewish actions before it was officially suppressed.
- 3.
This was actually the Polish general Władysław Langner (1896–1972). Over the period September 12–22, 1939, he commanded Polish armed forces in opposing both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army in and around Lwów, an episode later called the “Battle of Lwów”. The defense of the city lasted 10 days, until, on September 22, Langner surrendered the city to the Soviets, in order, as he said, “not to further endanger the lives of the people and risk the destruction of the city”.
- 4.
Organizer of student rallies, leader of an organization responsible for several murders. See Chapter 7
- 5.
An abbreviation for Kommunisticheski˘ı Soyuz Molodezhi (Communist Union of Youth), the official Soviet youth organization.
- 6.
Oleksandr Kornijczuk (1905–1972), Ukrainian playwright and socio-political activist. In 1943 appointed Deputy Commissioner for Foreign Affairs of the USSR.
- 7.
Zaolzie is the Polish name for the lands beyond the Olza River, now comprising the eastern part of the Czech portion of Cieszyn Silesia. The region was formed in 1920, when Cieszyn Silesia was divided between Czechoslovakia and Poland. The division was unsatisfactory to all parties and the resulting conflict led ultimately to the annexation of the region by Poland in 1938.
- 8.
“We are not vegetarians.”
- 9.
Joseph Stalin, Marshal of the Soviet Union (1943–1945), and Generalissimus (1945–1953).
- 10.
Except in the civil war of 1917–1922, when it defeated the White Army and their allies—but that was a good generation earlier, so a different incarnation, one might say.
- 11.
Meaning perhaps, a product of the class system.
- 12.
Signed in 1932. Unilaterally broken by the USSR on September 17, 1939, in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
- 13.
H. Menachem Wojdysławski (1919–1942), Warsaw topologist. Wrote an influential paper titled “R´etractes absolus et hyperespaces des continus”, Fund. Math. 32 (1939), pp. 184–192.
- 14.
Now understood to include occupied south-eastern Poland.
- 15.
August Zierhoffer (1893–1969), Polish geographer and geologist, specializing in geomorphology. Studied at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów, and held a professorship there from 1932 to 1939.
- 16.
The word in question is illegible in Steinhaus’ manuscript.
- 17.
This was an abridged version of the collectively written History of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union, published in 1938. Stalin is believed to have been the author of the section of Chapter 4 entitled “Dialectical and Historical Materialism,” an exposition of the foundations of Marxist philosophy, and possibly of other parts of the tract.
- 18.
Leon Davidovich Trotski˘ı (1879–1940), Russian-Jewish Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxian theorist. Second only to Lenin among the leaders of the October Revolution. Played a major role in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War following the revolution. Removed from power, deported, and eventually assassinated through the machinations of Stalin.
- 19.
Mostly “Old Bolsheviks”, the leadership of the secret police (NKVD), and others who might potentially have challenged Stalin’s authority. For similar reasons Stalin also purged almost the whole of the officer class of the Red Army in the late 1930s.
- 20.
In fact, it is now known that in the spring of 1940 the French armed forces were superior to those of Germany. The 6-week defeat of France is now attributed rather to French military incompetence and psychological unpreparedness. See, for example, Chapter XI of: Tony Judt, Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten 20th Century, The Penguin Press, 2008.
- 21.
Russian acronym for “Extraordinary Commission”, the first Soviet State security organization, decreed by Lenin in December 1917, and headed by Feliks Dzerzhinsky. Under its auspices many thousands of abductions and executions were carried out. Forerunner of the NKVD.
- 22.
The modern Persian versions of the bad and good spirits, respectively, of the Zoroastrian religion of the ancient Iranians and the modern Parsees.
- 23.
Law of the Excluded Middle or Tertium non datur (“no third (possibility) is given”), meaning that every meaningful statement is either true or false.
- 24.
For example, the progression monarchy—capitalist democracy—communism of a society, resulting from the struggle between classes, with communism as the final utopian synthesis. The idea, but not the name, was first proposed by Marx and Engels. Although one might object to this on various grounds, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the negation of the Law of the Excluded Middle, except by loose analogy.
- 25.
But perhaps modern materialists’ reductions are more arguable.
- 26.
“When two do the same, it isn’t the same.”
- 27.
This is probably Ernst Kolman (1892–1979), Marxist philosopher, born in Prague, notable for his activities as chief ideological watchdog of Soviet science. One of his publications is titled “Karl Marx and Mathematics”. In September 1932, he and Bernays both gave talks in Section VII (Philosophy and History) at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Z¨urich. The title of Kolman’s talk was “Eine neue Grundlegung der Differentialrechnung durch Marx” (A new basis for the differential calculus by Marx).
- 28.
Paul Isaac Bernays (1888–1977), Swiss mathematician. Contributed to mathematical logic, axiomatic set theory, and the philosophy of mathematics. Sometime assistant and close collaborator of Hilbert.
- 29.
Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny (Illustrated Daily Courier), a Polish daily as well as a publishing house, founded by Marian Dąbrowski in Kraków in 1910. Poland’s most popular daily in the 1920s. The last issue appeared on October 26, 1939.
- 30.
As ultimately agreed upon, this followed the rivers San, Vistula, and Narew.
- 31.
Polish city on the Vistula, considerably to the south-east of Warsaw.
- 32.
“Go back!”
- 33.
Władysław Broniewski (1897–1962), Polish poet and soldier. Decorated in the 1919–1921 Polish-Soviet war.
- 34.
A town in northeastern Poland.
- 35.
“A Jewess is no lady”.
- 36.
Halina Górska (1898–1942), Polish writer and communist activist. After Lwów was occupied by the Soviets, she collaborated actively with them, naively believing their propaganda. Fled with the Soviets from the advancing German army but returned to Lwów soon after. Arrested in June 1942 by the Nazis and executed.
- 37.
Political Commissar. (An abbreviation of the Russian for political leader.)
- 38.
The Finno-Soviet War began on November 30, 1939, with a Soviet offensive, and ended March 13, 1940. Although their army was smaller and they had much less mat´eriel than the Soviets, the Finns were able to resist the invasion far longer than expected. In the end Finland ceded only 11 % of its prewar territory to the USSR. On the other hand, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were incorporated into the USSR in June 1940.
- 39.
Finland had been part of the Russian empire from 1809 to 1917.
- 40.
“Everything will [soon] come.”
- 41.
Benedykt Fuliński (1881–1942), Polish biologist. Professor at the Lwów Polytechnic 1919–1941. Died in 1942 during a severe depression caused by the conditions of Soviet and then German occupation.
- 42.
Antoni Cieszyński (1882–1941), Polish physician, world-renowned dentist, and surgeon. Head of the Institute of Stomatology at Lwów University. Murdered by the Germans during the “Massacre of Lwów professors”.
- 43.
Perhaps Lefchenko was referring to the essay Ziemia Czerwieńska odwieczna, nierozerwalna część Polski published by Grabski in Lwów in 1939. Grody Czerwieńskie (“Red Cities”) was the ancient name for the borderlands between Rus′ and Poland, probably taking its name from the fortress of Czerwień.
- 44.
Antoni Zygmund (1900–1992), Polish-American mathematician. A major twentieth century mathematician. Professor at the University of Chicago from 1947. (Dedicated his book Trigonometric Series to A. Rajchman and J. Marcinkiewicz, respectively his teacher and pupil.)
- 45.
Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
- 46.
Stanisław Krystyn Zaremba (1903–1990), Polish mountaineer and mathematician. Son of Stanisław Zaremba Sr.
- 47.
In India?
- 48.
According to one version of his fate, he was executed by the Soviets at Katyń in 1940, although his name was never found on any list of those executed there.
- 49.
One source has him instead a docent at Lwów University.
- 50.
Formerly towns in eastern Poland, now in western Ukraine.
- 51.
Far south-eastern Siberia.
- 52.
“Your workers are also capitalists!”
- 53.
Tadeusz Peiper (1891–1969), Polish poet, writer, and literary critic. Anatol Stern (1899–1968), Polish poet, writer, and art critic. Arrested in 1940 by the NKVD and sent to the Gulag. Aleksander Wat (1900–1967), Polish poet, writer, co-founder of Polish futurism. Sympathized with communism from the late 1920s. Arrested and deported by the NKVD in 1940.
- 54.
Wanda Wasilewska (1905–1964), Polish-Soviet novelist and communist political activist. Fled from Warsaw to Lwów in 1939, and thence to the Soviet Union. Played a significant role in the formation of a Polish division of the Red Army during World War II. Wrote novels in Polish in the style of “Soviet realism”.
- 55.
Herminia Naglerowa (pseudonym Jan Stycz) (1890–1957), Polish writer and publicist. Teodor Parnicki (1908–1988), Polish writer, notably of historical novels.
- 56.
Stanisław Wasylewski (1885–1953), Polish writer, journalist, literary critic, and translator.
- 57.
Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (PPS), active from 1892 to 1948.
- 58.
A town not far from Lwów.
- 59.
Stalinu is the dative form of Stalin in Russian.
- 60.
Jewrej is the Polish transliteration of the Russian word Yevre˘ı, meaning Jew—Żyd in Polish. Hebrajczyk, meaning a Hebrew, is rarely used in modern Polish.
- 61.
Marceli Stark (1908–1974), Polish mathematician and editor. During World War II survived the Warsaw Ghetto and various concentration camps. Connected with Wrocław University postwar, then, in 1951, moved to Warsaw, where he held several responsible positions at the Mathematics Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Published several textbooks which were very popular in Poland and translated into other languages.
- 62.
Polish papyrologist, librarian, and historian of philosophy. Lived from 1883 to 1947.
- 63.
Probably closer to 1930, when the first of Stalin’s purges began.
- 64.
Except for the biological sciences, which came under the leadership of the incompetent agronomist Lysenko.
- 65.
Pavel Sergeevich Aleksandrov (1896–1982), eminent Soviet topologist. Mikhail Alekseevich Lavrentiev (1900–1980), outstanding Soviet applied mathematician.
- 66.
Nikola˘ı Vasilievich Gogol′ (1809–1852), great Ukrainian-born Russian satirical novelist and dramatist.
- 67.
Irina Wilde (1907–1982), Ukrainian writer. The novel of hers read by Steinhaus was published in Ukrainian in 1938.
- 68.
Ivan Yakovych Franko (1856–1916), Ukrainian scholar from Galicia, novelist, poet, journalist, and political activist. He was the first to write novels and modern verse in Ukrainian. On January 8, 1940, the Jan Kazimierz University of Lwów was renamed “Ivan Franko L′viv State University”.
- 69.
The Mazurs are a Slavic ethnic group with historical origins in Mazovia, a region of cultural and historical importance of east-central Poland.
- 70.
Indeed, Polish mathematical terminology is very specific to Polish. For example, the word for “integral” in most western languages, including Russian, is similar to the English variant, but in Polish it is the Polish word całka for something like “wholeness”. Steinhaus’s opinion of Polish mathematical terminology was that “It is not our strong point”. (Compare S. Hartman, “Uwagi o Słowniku Racjonalnym Hugona Steinhausa”, Wiadomości Matematyczne 26 (1985), p. 229.)
- 71.
“settlement, rural town”
- 72.
“Water Polish”, a mixture of German, Polish, and Czech used by the Poles of regions of Upper and Lower Silesia from the seventeenth century, now extinct.
- 73.
In the modern world certain former dialects, so-called, have recently become national languages, such as Slovak (since 1993) and Ukrainian (since 1991), and now need to be developed so as to serve as media for scientific communication—just like the creole English in days gone by.
- 74.
Miron Zarzycki (1889–1961), Ukrainian mathematician.
- 75.
Marian Mojżesz Jacob (1900–1944), Warsaw actuary. When the Germans entered Lwów, he began working in their Organisation Todt. In 1944 he returned to Warsaw, where he died.
- 76.
Meier Eidelheit (1911–1943), Polish mathematician. Obtained his doctorate in 1938. Murdered by the Nazis. Edward Szpilrajn-Marczewski (1907–1976), Polish mathematician originally from Warsaw. Worked in measure theory, set theory, general topology, probability theory, and universal algebra. When the Germans entered Lwów, he returned to Warsaw, changing his name to Marczewski, a name he subsequently retained. Played an important role in establishing a center for mathematics in Wrocław after the war.
- 77.
Now a suburb of Oranienburg, a town in Brandenburg, Germany.
- 78.
Andrzej Koźniewski (1907–1939), Warsaw specialist in actuarial science.
- 79.
Town in south-eastern Poland on the San river.
- 80.
Town in present-day western Ukraine. Site of a prison camp for Polish prisoners of war, especially officers. Some died in the camp, but the majority were murdered in the Katyń massacre.
- 81.
Ryszard Ganszyniec (Gansiniec) (1888–1958), Polish philologist, professor of cultural history.
- 82.
Stefan Rudniański (1887–1941), Polish philosopher and pedagogue. Had been active in the Polish Communist Party.
- 83.
“The Communist International”, an organization founded in Moscow in 1919 dedicated to fighting for “the overthrow of international bourgeoisie and the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state.”
- 84.
“Gagarin’s a fool!”
- 85.
“tabulation experts”
- 86.
Those workers who, following the example of the miner Alekse˘ı Grigorievich Stakhanov (1906–1977), worked extra hard in order to exceed production targets and demonstrate the superiority of the socialist economic system.
- 87.
This second phantom would seem to have come into its own only following the invasion of the USSR by Germany and during the Cold War.
- 88.
Many would say the waste was caused mainly by the lack of incentive and the inevitable failings of a centrally planned economy.
- 89.
They also established special shops full of luxury and otherwise unobtainable goods—such as the chain called Beriozka—for foreign visitors to spend their valuable foreign currency in, and for the ruling elite of the Party, from which the common folk were excluded.
- 90.
A significant part of the Soviet underground economy in the former USSR consisted of so-called blat, the doing of a favor—such as the gift of a joint of good quality meat stolen from the abattoir or a table in a restaurant purporting to be full—in return for payment or a favor in return, the whole system depending on extensive networking for its effectiveness.
- 91.
“We go behind our nation, our party, [our leader] Stalin.”
- 92.
Name taken from the Piast dynasty, the first ruling dynasty of Poland, lasting from the tenth to fourteenth centuries, and as late as the seventeenth in Masovia and Silesia.
- 93.
In the former USSR everyone was issued with an (internal) passport as a means of identification.
- 94.
According to other sources 100 km from the border—see, e.g., B. Gleichgewicht, Widziane z oddali, Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, Wrocław 1993, Chapter IV.
- 95.
Treaty between Poland, Russia, and Ukraine ending the Soviet-Polish War of 1919–1920, and ceding to Poland parts of Belorussia and Ukraine. (The ceded regions had in fact belonged to Poland prior to the third partition, and in part prior to the second partition.)
- 96.
Władysław (1874–1938) and Stanisław Grabski (see Chapter 3) were brothers serving in the Sejm in the early 1920s, the former intermittently as prime minister. The Treaty of Riga entitled Jews from the Ukraine, where they had been subject to a wave of pogroms, to choose the country they preferred as their domicile, and several hundred thousand chose Poland. The Grabski brothers favored the assimilationist policy called “Polonization”, whereas Piłsudski advocated a more tolerant approach.
- 97.
“atrocity propaganda”
- 98.
Jerzy Borejsza (born Benjamin Goldberg) (1905–1952), Polish-Jewish communist activist and writer. Chief of the communist press and the publishing house Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza “Czytelnik” during the Stalinist period of the People’s Republic of Poland. Elżbieta Szemplińska (1910–1991), Polish poet and prose writer. Allan Kosko (1907–1986), Polish poet, writer, and translator. Adolf Rudnicki (1912–1990), Polish-Jewish author and essayist, best known for his works on the Holocaust and Jewish resistance in Poland during World War II. Mieczysław Jastrun (1903–1983), Polish-Jewish essayist and poet. Lucjan Szenwald (1909–1944), Polish poet and communist activist. An enthusiastic supporter of the Bolsheviks in Lwów 1939–1941, he joined the Red Army in 1941 and took part in the formation of the Soviet-affiliated Polish 1st Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division. Halina Fryde was a Polish poet; her name appears in Polish literary journals, e.g. Skawa. Czasopismo Literackie, Nos. 6 and 7 (1939). Jalu Kurek (1904–1983), Polish poet and prose writer. Stanisław Franciszek Parecki (1913–1941), Polish poet, translator, and cartoonist. Drew satirical cartoons for Czerwony Sztandar (The Red Banner) in 1940. Leon Pasternak (1910–1969), Polish poet and satirist. Related to the Russian poet Boris Pasternak. Michał Maksymilian Boruchowicz (1911–1987), Polish-Jewish writer. Bruno Winawer (1883–1944), Polish writer of popular social comedies and science fiction, journalist, and physicist. Adam Ważyk (1905–1982), noted Polish writer and poet. From 1955, well known for his criticism of the postwar Polish leadership. Jan Kott (Steinhaus’s son-in-law) (1914–2001), well-known Polish writer, literary critic and theoretician of the theater. Julian Przyboś (1901–1970), Polish poet, essayist, and translator. One of the most important poets of the Kraków avant-garde. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1941. Jerzy Putrament (1910–1986), Polish writer, poet, editor, and politician. Franciszek Gil (1917–1960), Polish writer and journalist. Zuzanna Ginczanka (1917–1944), Jewish-Polish poet.
- 99.
Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich or the Ossolineum, one of the most important centers of Polish science and culture, until 1939 combining a library, publishing house and the Lubomirski Museum. Founded for the Polish Nation in 1817 by Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński, scion of a Polish noble dynasty dating from the fourteenth century. A branch was opened in Lwów in 1827. In 1947, the Ossolineum was partly resuscitated in Wrocław.
- 100.
Jan Kiliński (1760–1819), a commander in the Kościuszko uprising in the late eighteenth century against the Russian rulers of Poland.
- 101.
Jan III Sobieski (1629–1696), a notable monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
- 102.
Stanisław Jan Jabłonowski (1634–1702), Polish nobleman, magnate, and outstanding military commander. He halted the Tatars at Lwów in 1695.
- 103.
To give it its full name, The Archcathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
- 104.
The feast day of St. Julius, pope from 337 to 352, is April 12.
- 105.
One estimate has the Soviets deporting around 1,200,000 Poles to various parts of the USSR, notably Kazakhstan, in 1940 and the first half of 1941.
- 106.
Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, the first line of the Polish national anthem, a lively mazurka composed by Józef Wybicki in 1797, two years after the Third Partition of Poland.
- 107.
Internal Soviet passports always indicated the nationality of the holder: Russian, Jewish, Georgian, American,….
- 108.
From the Russian for Jew.
- 109.
A socialist literary monthly, founded by Wanda Wasilewska in Lwów and published under the auspices of the Soviet Writers’ Union.
- 110.
Polish poet, translator, and humorist. Born 1910. Wrote underground satirical articles and poems during World War II. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and executed in the infamous Pawiak prison.
- 111.
Carpets of woven tapestry.
- 112.
Jan Hirschler (1883–1951), Polish biologist, professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at Lwów University. Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences between the wars. In 1940 he went voluntarily to Germany, where he worked inter alia at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin, renouncing his Polish citizenship in order to do so. Returned to Poland in 1948, where he was imprisoned till 1949 for collaborating with the Nazis. From 1949 he resumed his research work in Gdańsk.
- 113.
An incorrect presumption, apparently. See the preceding footnote.
- 114.
Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg (1875–1944), German diplomat. Last German ambassador to the USSR before Operation Barbarossa. After the failed plot of July 20, 1944 to assassinate Hitler, he was accused of being a co-conspirator and executed.
- 115.
Formerly Ekaterinburg, and since the collapse of the USSR once again called by that name.
- 116.
Perhaps in a camp of the Gulag?
- 117.
Resort town some 90 km from Lwów, located at the foot of the Gorgany mountain range in the eastern Carpathians.
- 118.
Resort or sanitorium.
- 119.
Capital of Georgia.
- 120.
Resort town on the Crimean shore of the Black Sea.
- 121.
Ernst Th¨almann (1886–1944), leader of the Communist party of Germany during much of the era of the Weimar Republic. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1933 and held in solitary confinement for 11 years before being shot on Hitler’s orders in 1944.
- 122.
Perhaps because the production of consumer goods was sacrificed to large-scale industrial production for much of the first 40 years of Soviet socialism.
- 123.
“tomorrow”
- 124.
A Soviet state publishing firm specializing in technical works.
- 125.
Presumably of finite two-dimensional measure.
- 126.
The Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.
- 127.
Astolphe-Louis-L´eonor, Marquis de Custine (1790–1857), French aristocrat and writer, best known for his travel writing, in particular his account of his visit to Russia in 1839 titled Empire of the Tsar: A Journey through Eternal Russia.
- 128.
Composed beginning in 1840, when Mickiewicz was appointed Professor of Slavonic Studies at the Coll`ege de France. In these lectures he indicates, in particular, the importance of Byron and Napoleon for the formation of the poetic ideal in Poland and other Slavic countries.
- 129.
Special Section (abbreviated).
- 130.
“trips on official business”
- 131.
A quantity of air or other gas in the pleural cavity between the lungs and the chest wall, associated with collapse of a lung.
- 132.
Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko (1746–1817), Polish-Lithuanian military leader during the uprising of 1794 (the “Kościuszko Uprising”) against Imperial Russia and the Kingdom of Prussia. He had fought earlier in the American Revolutionary War as a colonel in the Continental Army.
- 133.
Aleksandr Vasilyevich Suvorov (1729–1800), last generalissimo of the Russian Empire. Fought against the Ottoman Empire, against the Poles in the Kościuszko Uprising, and against the French Revolutionary Army in Italy, never losing a battle.
- 134.
Originally Larysa Kvitka-Kosach (1871–1913), Ukrainian lyric poet and dramatist.
- 135.
Kazakh traditional folk singer. For some time deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh SSR. Lived from 1846 to 1945.
- 136.
A famous socialist, communist, social-democratic, and anarchist anthem. Words written by Eug`ene Pottier (1816–1887) in 1871, and set to music by Pierre de Geyter (1848–1932) in 1888.
- 137.
A small town about 50 km west of Lwów, now in Ukraine.
- 138.
Perhaps because the renegade peasant pseudo-scientist Trofim Lysenko was then director of Soviet biology. Lysenko’s work was formally discredited in the USSR only in 1964.
- 139.
This must have been merely rumor, since Germany’s attack on Russia came as a surprise—despite many indirect warnings—to Stalin.
- 140.
Sir Richard Stafford Cripps (1889–1952), British labor politician. British ambassador to the Soviet Union 1940–1942. Served in a number of positions under the National Coalition led by Churchill during World War II. Served in the Attlee government postwar.
- 141.
Joanna Guze (1917–2009), Polish translator, critic, and art historian.
- 142.
The Royal Castle in Warsaw, traditional residence of Polish monarchs, and from 1926 to 1939 the seat of the Polish President, Ignacy Mościcki. On December 2, 1930, President Mościcki, together with Anton Philips, officially declared open a new Philips plant in Warsaw. In addition to lightbulbs and lamps, it produced the first radios.
- 143.
Perhaps the author is referring here to Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics, the highly successful quantum mechanical formalism for which Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932.
- 144.
An abbreviation of the Russian word for “special” or “specialist”, as in spetssluzhba meaning “special service”.
- 145.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovski˘ı (1893–1930), Russian poet of the revolution, representative of early Russian futurism. He committed suicide in 1930 by shooting himself, whether out of unrequited love or disillusionment with the course the Soviet Union was taking under Stalin is not clear. Some conjecture that he was purged.
- 146.
Lev Genrikhovich Shnirelman (1905–1938), Soviet mathematician. With L. Lyusternik invented the “Lyusternik–Shnirelman category”, a global invariant of a topological space.
- 147.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (1905–1984), Soviet novelist. Best known for his 1934 novel Quiet Flows the Don describing the lives of the Don Cossacks prior to and during World War I and the revolution. Nobel laureate for literature in 1965.
- 148.
Alekse˘ı Nikolaevich Tolsto˘ı (1883–1945), Russian and Soviet writer, especially of historical novels.
- 149.
Georgi˘ı Maksimilianovich Malenkov (1902–1988), close collaborator of Stalin. Leader of the Communist Party. Overshadowed by Khrushchov in 1953.
- 150.
In Polish Wały Hetmańskie, one of Lwów’s main promenades before World War II. Named after Hetman Stanisław Jabłonowski, defender of Lwów against the Tatars in 1695. A monument to him used to stand at this site, but was destroyed by the Soviets after the war.
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Steinhaus, H. (2015). The First Occupation. In: Burns, R., Szymaniec, I., Weron, A. (eds) Mathematician for All Seasons. Vita Mathematica, vol 18. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21984-4_8
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