You Know More Poles than You Think Quiz

Answer: Robert Lewandowski

Lewandowski (born 1988) started his senior career in 2005 with Delta Warsaw. After having played with several other Polish teams, he moved to Germany in 2010. After four years with Borussia Dortmund he moved to Bayern Munich, and in his eight seasons with this club he made an incredible number of goals: 238 goals in 253 matches in the national competition, 29 goals in 33 matches in the national cup competition, and 69 goals in 78 matches in the European Champions League. In July 2022 Lewandowski signed a four-year contract with the Spanish club Barcelona.

Lewandowski won the Ballon d'Or (best striker in Europe) in 2021 and 2022, the European Golden Shoe (best soccer player in Europe) in 2021 and 2022, and Best FIFA Men's player in 2020 and 2021, besides dozens of less prestigious awards.
Malinowski (1951-1981) was a runner, who won Olympic gold on the 3000m steeplechase in 1980.

Edward Lasker (1885-1981) was an engineer and amateur chess player, who won the US Open Championship five times. Radwanska (born 1989) was a tennis player, best known for her victory in the 2015 WTA Finals.

Answer: Elzbieta Zawacka

Elzbieta Zawacka (1909-2009) was born in Torun, then Germany, and died in the same village, that was added to Poland in 1919. She studied math at the university of Poznan and worked as a teacher on several secondary schools, as well as instructor in the Women's Military Training. (For those of you who speak Polish fluently, I'll add the official name: Przysposobienie Wojskowe Kobiet. As I don't speak Polish, I won't try to pronounce this official name).

Late 1939 she joined the Armed Resistance (Zwiazek Walki Zbrojnej, abbreviated to ZWZ) and was given the code name Zelma. Later on she changed her code name to Zo. In 1943 she traveled to Great-Britain, where she signed up for parachute training with the special agents nicknamed the Cichociemni (the Silent Unseen). She was dropped over Poland in 1943 and took part in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.

In 2006 Zawacka was promoted to brigadier general of the Polish army.
Major General Stanislaw Sosabowski (1892-1967) was the commanding officer of the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade and fought at Arnhem (Netherlands) in 1944.

Rydz-Smigly (also known as Smigly-Rydz) lived from 1886 to 1941. He was Marshall of Poland and commander in chief of the Polish army since 1935. His code names included Tarlowski and Adam Zawisza. General Komorowski (1895-1966) had the code name Bor, which he later added to his full name. He was the leader of the Warsaw Uprising.

Answer: Lech Walesa

Lech Walesa (born 1943) started his work as an electrician in 1967, after having worked as a car mechanic and served in the army. After years of membership of different illegal trade unions, Walesa joined the Wolne Zwiazki Zawodowe Wybrzeza (WZZW, Free Trade Unions of the Coast) in 1978. The WZZW organized a large strike in Gdansk in 1980, and this led to the founding of the trade union Solidarnosc (Solidarity) in August 1980 - the first trade union authorized by the communist government of Poland. Walesa was elected the first chairman of Solidarnosc, and continued this job until 1991.

In December 1990, Lech Walesa was elected President of Poland - the first non-communist President since 1945. He would keep this job for five years. Walesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.

Begin (1913-1992) was born in Poland, but would become more famous as Israeli Prime Minister. Dzierzynski (1877-1926) was born in Poland, hence I used the Polish orthography of his name. But he gained more fame (or infamy) in Russia, as the founder of the Cheka (secret police). Brzezinski (1928-2017) was also born in Poland, but only reached the TV news as counselor to the American president, Lyndon B Johnson, and as National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter.

Answer: Daniel Libeskind

Libeskind was born in Lodz in 1946. He graduated as an architect in 1970. After spending many years as an architectural theorist, he completed his first building only in 1998: the Felix Nussbaum Haus, a museum in Osnabruck, Germany. In 2001 he completed the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

After the terrorist attacks on New York in September 2001, which took down all of the World Trade Centre, there were soon projects to rebuild something on Ground Zero. Daniel Libeskind won the competition as chief architect in 2003, but many of his ideas were not followed by the actual architect David Childs.

Malewicz (187-1935) was a painter, best known for his Suprematist works.
The artist Max Weber (1881-1961) was also a painter, who worked mostly in a Cubist style. There are of course other people named Max Weber, but this painter was born in Bialystock (nowadays Poland). Bilinska-Bohdanowicz (1854-1893) is best known for her portraits.

Answer: Andrzej Wajda

Wajda (1926-2016) started his career as a director with some short movies in 1951 and 1953. His first full-length movie was "Pokolenie" ("A Generation") in 1955, about a teenage resistance fighter during World War II. "Kanal" (1957) and "Popiol I Diament" ("Ashes and Diamonds", 1958) completed the war trilogy which gained Wajda fame. His movies nominated for an Oscar were "Ziemia obiecana" ("The Promised Land", 1975), "Panny z Wilka" ("The Maids of Wilko", 1979); "Clowiek z zelaza" ("The Man of Iron", 1981) and "Katyn" (2007).


Kieslowski (1941-1996) was a Polish director, but he is best known for the movies he filmed in France: "La double vie de Véronique" ("The Double Life of Véronique", 1991) and the trilogy "Trois Couleurs" ("Three Colours"): " Trois Couleurs : Bleu" ("Three Colours: Blue", 1993); "Trois Couleurs: Blanc" ("Three Colours: White", 1994) and "Trois Couleurs: Rouge" ("Three colours: Red", 1994). He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director and an Oscar for Best Screenplay for the latter of these movies. Agnieszka Holland (born 1948) was nominated for an Oscar as Best Director for "Europa Europa" (1990). Skolimowski (born 1938) is known as a script writer, actor and director. He was nominated for a European Film Award for his movie "Eo" (2022).

Answer: Haroun Tazieff

Tazieff was born in Warsaw in 1914. Although born as a Russian, he changed his nationality to Belgian (in 1936) and French (in 1971) and claimed to be a mix of different nationalities. Tazieff studied agronomy and geology. When working in Belgian Congo in 1948, he witnessed a volcanic eruption from very close, and decided to dedicate his scientific work henceforth to volcanology. His films showing volcanoes in full eruption earned him much public reconnaissance, and even earned him an Oscar nomination ("Le volcan interdit", 1966).

Copernicus (1473-1543) was known as an astronomer, the first since ancient times to abandon the geocentric view and promote heliocentrism. Albert Sabin (1906-1993) was born as Abram Saperstejn in Bialystok. He moved to the USA in 1921 and adopted the American nationality. Sabin is best known for the development of the oral polio vaccine. Zamenhof (1859-1917) worked as an ophthalmologist, but he is better known as the developer of the artificial language Esperanto.

Answer: Stanislaw Lem

Lem (1921-2006) studied medicine, but refused to graduate because he could not stand the sight of blood. In 1946 he started writing in various genres. Because of the constant struggle with the communist state censors, Lem soon specialized in science-fiction. His most famous novel "Solaris" (1961) describes the efforts of a team of communication experts to try to talk to a sentient ocean on a distant planet.

Sienkiewicz (1846-1916) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1905. His masterpiece is "Quo Vadis" (1896). Reymont (1867-1925) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. He is best known for his 1899 novel "Ziemia obiecana" ("The Promised Land"). Olga Tokarczuk (born 1962) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018. One of her first masterpieces was "Prawiek I inne czasy" ("Primeval and Other Times", 1996).

Answer: Maksymilian Kolbe

Maksymilian Kolbe (1894-1941) was born with the first name Raymund. In 1907 he joined the order of the Franciscan friars, and was ordained a priest in 1918. He worked as a missionary in Asia during the first half of the Thirties. On his return, he took charge of the monastery of Niepokolanow, which he turned into a hospital as soon as World War II started.

In 1941 the Germans closed the monastery and arrested Kolbe because of his involvement with hiding Jews. Kolbe was transferred to Auschwitz, and when the camp commander randomly picked ten men to die of starvation, Kolbe immediately volunteered to take the place of another prisoner. Kolbe was eventually killed by a fatal injection on August 14, 1941. The Roman Catholic church has canonized him and appointed him as patron saint of drug addicts, journalists, and political prisoners.

Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938) died of natural causes. Stanislaw of Szczepanow (1030-1079) was born in Szczepanow, but is perhaps better known as Stanislaw of Krakow (where he was bishop). He was murdered by king Boleslaw II. Zygmunt Gorazdowski (1845-1920) died of natural causes.

Answer: Karol Lipinski

Lipinski (1790-1861) was a violin virtuoso. In 1817 he traveled to Italy in order to meet Niccolo Paganini, and for a while they played daily together. They even shared a concert in Milan. For some reason or another they fell out with each other, and Paganini later would have declared "I don't know who's the greatest violinist, but Lipinski certainly is the second greatest".

Lipinski's concert in 1829 inspired the great Chopin to start his own career as violinist, pianist and composer. Lipinski also composed, and he left us three symphonies, three operas, and four violin concertos, to mention only the top of the iceberg.

Rubinstein (1887-1982) was a pianist. Stefan Askenase (1896-1985) was a pianist and music teacher. Szpilman (1911-2000) was a pianist and composer, and also the main character of Roman Polanski's movie "The Pianist" (2002, starring Adrien Brody).

Answer: Helena Rubinstein

Helena Rubinstein (1870-1965) was born in Krakow. When she refused a convened marriage, she migrated to Australia in 1896 - although she hardly spoke English. There she started her own cosmetics business, especially aimed at skincare: day and night creams, lotions and cleansers. In 1908 she moved to London , and in 1914 to the United States. After Rubinstein's death, her company was sold to Colgate-Palmolive and later on to L'Oreal.

Michal Marks (1859-1907) was born into a Polish-Jewish family in Slonim (nowadays Belarus). Together with Thomas Spencer, he founded the eponymous English supermarket chain Marks & Spencer. Antoni Patek (1812-1877) was a watch maker and founder of the eponymous Swiss wristwatch company. Nathan Handwerker (1892-1974) migrated from Poland to the USA and started the eponymous hot dog company in 1916.