Let's discover history together
Discovering the history
Sunday, 9 August 2026
John of Lancaster: The English Duke Who Ruled France for a Child King
Ferdynand Arczyński: A Polish Resistance Member Who Helped Thousands of Jewish People in the Second World War.
Ferdynand Arczyński: A Polish Resistance Member Who Helped Thousands of Jewish People in the Second World War.
Today I want to find out a little bit about Ferdynand Arczyński. He was a remarkable Polish journalist and resistance member who helped thousands of Jewish people.
Ferdynand was born on the 8th of December 1900 in Kraków, Poland. He took part in the Silesian Uprisings, between 1919 and 1921 and later became involved in politics and worked as a newspaper editor.
Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Ferdynand joined the underground resistance. Using the secret names “Marek” and “Lukowski”, he became one of the founding members of Żegota, the Council for Aid to Jews.
Żegota was created to help Jewish people escape persecution and survive in hiding. Ferdynand served as the organisation’s treasurer and also led its document-forging department.
He helped to produce false identity papers, work permits and Catholic birth and marriage certificates. These documents allowed Jewish men, women and children to hide outside the ghettos under new identities.
Ferdynand also arranged safe accommodation, medical care and financial assistance. He acted as a link between Żegota groups in cities including Kraków, Lwów and Lublin, while encouraging others to join the rescue effort.
After the war, Ferdynand worked as a journalist and served as a member of the Polish parliament between 1947 and 1952.
On the 18th of May 1965, Yad Vashem recognised Ferdynand Arczyński as Righteous Among the Nations for risking his life to help Jewish people during the Holocaust.
He sadly died in Warsaw in 1979.
Saturday, 8 August 2026
Reginald Pole: The Tudor Cardinal Who Defied Henry VIII and Lost a Lot of His Family
Irena Sendler: The Woman Who Risked Everything to Save Jewish Children.
Irena Sendler: The Woman Who Risked Everything to Save
Jewish Children.
Today I want to find out a little about Irena Sendler. She was
a remarkable Polish social worker who helped to save hundreds of Jewish
children.
She was born as Irena Krzyżanowska on the 15th of February
1910 in Warsaw, which was at the time part of the Russian Empire. Her father was
Stanisław Krzyżanowski, he was a doctor who treated poor patients regardless of
their religion, often without accepting payment. Many of his patients were
Jewish, and after he died from typhus when Irena was only seven years old,
members of the Jewish community offered to support the family. Although her
mother declined, Irena never forgot their kindness. She later said that her
father had taught her that when someone is drowning, you help them, no matter
who they are.
She studied at the University of Warsaw, where she opposed
the growing discrimination against Jewish students. After leaving university,
she worked as a social worker in Warsaw, helping vulnerable families living in
poverty.
Everything changed when Germany invaded Poland on the 1st of
September 1939. After the Germans sealed the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, around
400,000 Jewish men, women and children were trapped inside in overcrowded and
desperate conditions. Because Irena worked for Warsaw’s Social Welfare
Department, she and several colleagues were able to obtain sanitary passes
allowing them to enter the ghetto. Officially, they were carrying out sanitary
and disease-control work, but they secretly brought in food, medicine and other
supplies at great risk.
As deportations increased during 1942, Irena and her
colleagues increased their efforts to help Jewish adults and children escape.
By early 1943, she was working with Żegota, the underground Council to Aid
Jews. Working under the codename "Jolanta", she helped to organise
the rescue of Jewish children from the ghetto. Some children were carried out
through hidden routes, while others left disguised as sick patients or hidden
in vehicles.
Once the children were safely outside, Irena helped to arrange
false identity papers and found places where they could hide, including with
Polish families, orphanages and convents. According to later accounts given by
Irena and her colleague Jadwiga Piotrowska, some of these records were placed
in bottles or jars and buried beneath an apple tree. Irena hoped that after the
war the children could be reunited with surviving relatives.
On the 18th of October 1943, the Gestapo arrested Irena. She
was imprisoned, beaten and tortured as the Germans demanded the names of her
fellow resistance members and the children she had helped. She refused to
reveal any information and was sentenced to death, but members of Żegota
managed to bribe German officials, allowing her to escape on the day she was
due to be executed. She immediately returned to underground work using a false
identity.
After the war, Irena continued her career in social work. In
1965, she was recognised by Yad Vashem in Israel as one of the Righteous Among
the Nations for risking her life to save Jewish people during the Holocaust.
Although she received many honours later in life, she always remained humble,
saying that every child she helped save was simply "the justification of
my existence on this Earth."
Irena Sendler died on the 12th of May 2008, at the age of 98.
Her courage reminds us that even in humanity's darkest moments, ordinary people
can make an extraordinary difference.
Friday, 7 August 2026
Hertha Ayrton: The Victorian Scientist Who Refused to Be Ignored.
Clara Kramer Part 8: Liberation and the Devastating Truth Waiting for Them Above Ground
Clara Kramer Part 8: Liberation and the Devastating Truth
Waiting for Them Above Ground
Today I want to find out what happened when Clara Kramer,
her family and the other people hiding beneath the Beck family’s house were
finally liberated.
By the summer of 1944, they had spent around 20 months
living inside the cramped underground bunker. Throughout that time, they had
survived hunger, illness, fire, German soldiers visiting the house and the
constant possibility that the hiding place might be discovered.
During July 1944, the Soviet Army advanced into the region
and the German forces began to withdraw. Żółkiew was eventually taken by Soviet
troops, ending the German occupation.
For those in hiding, it must have been difficult to believe
that the danger that had been present for so long was truly over. They had
spent so long staying silent and treating every sound as a possible threat. There
must have been a concern that the German soldiers might return or whether it
was finally safe to reveal themselves.
Eventually, Clara, her parents and the others climbed out of
the bunker. She went in as a frightened 15-year-old girl and came out after
almost two years spent largely without fresh air, daylight or freedom.
The world must have seemed enormous after so long. But
liberation did not mean that Clara could return to the life she had known
before the war. The town was still there, but much of the Jewish community had
disappeared.
Clara and the others began the painful process of
discovering who had survived. News often came slowly. Some people had been
murdered in nearby mass shootings. Others had been deported to the Bełżec
extermination camp or taken elsewhere. A small number had survived in hiding,
in camps or after escaping further east.
Clara already knew that her sister, Mania had fled from the
bunker during a fire in April 1943 and was captured and killed. Clara’s grandmother,
friends, neighbours and members of her extended family had also been scattered,
deported or murdered. Her grandfather was arrested during the Soviet occupation
and never returned.
Before the war, approximately 5,000 Jewish people had lived
in Żółkiew. Clara later estimated that only about 50 survived the Holocaust.
The community that had once supported synagogues, Jewish schools, businesses,
charities and family celebrations had been almost completely destroyed.
The survival of the people inside the bunker was
extraordinary. They owed their lives to Valentin Beck, his wife Julia and their
daughter Ala, who had continued protecting them despite the danger to
themselves. Clara’s diary also became important after liberation. It helped to
demonstrate to the Soviet authorities that Valentin Beck had not just worked
alongside the German occupiers but he had risked his life to rescue Jewish
families.
Liberation brought them freedom, but it also showed the true
scale of everything Clara had lost. She had survived, her parents had survived.
But the childhood world she remembered could never return.
After the war, Clara eventually lived in displaced persons
camps in Austria and Germany. She married another Holocaust survivor, Sol
Kramer, and began rebuilding her life. However, she continued to preserve the
memory of Żółkiew’s destroyed Jewish community and of the Beck family, whose
courage had made her survival possible.
How could survivors begin rebuilding their lives when almost
everyone and everything they had known had been taken from them?
Thursday, 6 August 2026
The Home Guard Part One: Why the Home Guard Was Created in 1940: Britain Prepares for Invasion
John of Lancaster: The English Duke Who Ruled France for a Child King
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Many remember Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon for their failed marriage and the bitter annulment that followed. Henry’s great obsession w...
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When Henry VIII Rejected Anne of Cleves: Politics and Cromwell’s Fall Today I want to find out a little more about the brief marriage of...