All About Poland – Facts – Figures – Documents Edited by J. H. Retinger Litt.D. with Map of Poland, Mineva Publishing Co Ltd, London, 1941. The map included with the book shows the division of Poland by Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s communist Soviet Russia after their attack on the country in September 1939.
An amazing find at Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, OR on Burnside Ave: Published in Great Britain in 1941 All About Poland: Facts – Figures – Documents edited by J. H. Retinger (Józef Hieronim Retinger (b. Kraków, 1888 – d. London 1960) a Polish scholar, publicist, writer and principal advisor to the Polish government-in-exile in London during World War II. First published in December 1940, this revised edition is dated April 1941.
The book includes a map of Poland which shows the line where Hitler and Stalin divided Poland in 1939 after Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union attacked and occupied the country under the terms of the then secret provisions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
The Minerva Publishing Co. promoted the book as furnishing “the Anglo-Saxon reader with the main historical, cultural and political data and statistics relating to Poland and Polish affairs as they were before the outbreak of the present war.”
One of the interesting bits of information in the book is the list of diplomatic and consular representatives of the United States in Poland in September 1939. The U.S. Ambassador was Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr.
I learned from the book that before the outbreak of World War II, there was in Warsaw a High School of Journalism for the training of journalists. The “High School” name may be misleading because it was a university-level school attended by those who already had a high school degree (“matura”).
