UT Event Report: The history of Poland during the World War II

2019.06.10

The event was ganized by the Faculty of Literature and   Humanities  together with partners from the University of Warsaw. The meeting place was the Hall of Kamal. The visiting professor from the University of Warsaw, Prof. Piotr Podemski presented a lecture on 10^th of June 2019 in the Hall of Kamal at the Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Tehran from 2 p.m till 4 p.m.

Professor Podemski studies modern Italian history, focusing on comparative politics, Soviet and East European politics, and the Holocaust. At the begining of the session, Hamed Kazemzadeh, Ph.D. Erasmus Mundus graduated from the University of Warsaw, briefly talked about the exchange program between the University of Tehran and European Universities.  

The professor of Institute of Intercultural and Specialized Communication under the University of Warsaw, started his talks from 1939 to 1945 which encompassed primarily the period from the Invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to the end of World War II.

Then he further added that following the German-Soviet non-aggression pact, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939 and by the Soviet Union on 17 September. The campaigns ended in early October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland.

After the Axis attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, all parts of Poland were occupied by Germany. He believed that under the two occupations, Polish citizens suffered enormous human and material losses.

According to his slides, many Polish citizens in particular the Polish Jews died as a result of these occupations.  

He said that post-war Poland was a state of reduced sovereignty, strongly dependent on the Soviet Union, but the only one possible under the existing circumstances and internationally recognized.

At the end of the session, there was a free discussion and commentary between students of the history department and him. This lecture was sponsored by the Erasmus program.