Polish Woman Research Articles

Sophie Postolska — zapomniana „Polka Rodina”

SOPHIE POSTOLSKA — FORGOTTEN „RODIN’S POLISH WOMAN”This article is dedicated to Sophie Postolska—a Polish sculptress, who was one of the few Polish artists recognized as Auguste Rodin’s pupils. It is an attempt to fill the up rich glossary of Polish people in France. The article brings up the most important and hard to determine facts from life of the long forgotten artist, like her studies in Académie de Paris and Académie Julian, professional relation with Antoine Bourdelle, frequent travels and affiliation with the artistic circles of Cracow and Zakopane. The letters held in Musée Rodin and private archive of artist’s family are a valuable source of knowledge. The correspondence forms a journal illustrated with postcards from Poland, which allows to determine the extent of the private relations between master and apprentice. The only remaining evidence of the artistic activity of Postolska is a sculpture bearing her signature held in Musée Rodin in Paris.

Kobiety w przestrzeni publicznej

Recent years have brought far reaching changes in the Polish public sphere and woman have played their part in it. It is therefore important to ask about their motivation for participation in public affairs, describe their preferred strategies and think about future, that is ask the question about durability of the chosen models. Public sphere today is growing more and more diverse which makes the task of defining it more difficult than ever. We are still looking for answers to questions such as what is the public sphere? What categories can be used to mark boundaries of public sphere? Who and what influences public sphere? What are the subjects operating in public sphere and what are the limits of their power? J. Habermas, J.S. Mill, J. Rowls, A. Giddens and H. Arendt have tried to answer all those questions and many more. Their thoughts were my inspiration.

Wangel Durlow, Z Grecji do Polski

Wangel Durlow is one of 7.5 thousand Aegean Macedonians that came to Poland as a result of the Greek civil war. In his narration he mostly recounts events related to the war and mandatory resettlement from his hometown in Northern Greece seen from the child’s perspective – Mr. Durlow was 12 when he left Greece. His account provides us with information on daily life and customs of the Macedonians living in Greece, difficult beginning of his stay in Poland resulting from cultural and civilization differences between Poland and Greece as well as education and upbringing of Greek children in Poland. 
 Despite pleas of his parents, who settled in Yugoslavia after the Greek civil war, he has not decided to leave Poland where he graduated from school and married a Polish woman. 
 There is a long description of the first meeting with his parents which took place only after 16 years of separation. The account of travels to Yugoslavia again emphasizes cultural differences between Poland Macedonia, especially the relation of the wife of Mr. Durlow with his parents. 
 In spite of the fact that the story of Wangel Durlow touches upon difficult and sometimes traumatic matters, he is recounting it with a sense of humor and has perspective towards it; he is emphasizing the influence of kind-hearted people – Polish teachers, his parents-in-law, who many times helped him to handle unfamiliar Polish reality.

The slaves who defeated Napoleon: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian War of Independence, 1801-1804

To a contemporary audience, Haiti brings to mind Voodoo spells, Tontons Macoutes, and boat people - nothing worth fighting over. Two centuries ago, however, Haiti, then known as Saint-Domingue, was the Pearl of the Antilles, France's most valuable overseas colony, the largest exporter of tropical products in the world, and the United States' second most important trading partner after England. Haiti was also the place where in 1801-1802 Napoleon Bonaparte sent the largest colonial venture of his reign: the Leclerc expedition. His goal was to remove the famous revolutionary Toussaint Louverture from office and, possibly, restore slavery. But within two years, the remnants of Bonaparte's once-proud army were evacuated in defeated, and Haiti declared its independence. This forgotten yet momentous conflict, in which lives were consumed by the thousands, is this book's main focus. In this ambitious monograph, Philippe Girard employs the latest tools of the historian's craft, multi-archival research in particular, and applies them to the climactic yet poorly understood last years of the Haitian Revolution. Haiti lost most of its archives to neglect and theft, but a substantial number of documents survive in French, U.S., British, and Spanish collections, both public and private. In all, The Slaves Who Defeated Napoleon relies on contemporary military, commercial, and administrative sources drawn from nineteen archives and research libraries on both sides of the Atlantic. Due to its extensive archival basis, the book corrects the many factual inaccuracies that have plagued previous accounts. It also offers a more rounded view of the Haitian Revolution, going beyond mere military minutia to include the activities of U.S. merchants; the in-fighting within the French government; the diplomacy between both the French and revolutionaries with the United States, England, and Spain; and the lives of the maroons, women, and children caught up in the revolutionary struggle. This multidimensional work tells not only of barefoot black soldiers ambushing Bonaparte's columns, but also of Rochambeau's mixed-race mistresses, French child drummers, Jewish bankers in Kingston, weapon smugglers from Quaker Philadelphia, Polish artillerists, and African-born maroons struggling to preserve their freedom against both white and black opponents. Equally groundbreaking is the book's willingness to move beyond tidy ideological and racial categories to depict an Atlantic society at the crossroads of African and European influences, where Haitian rebels fought France while embracing its ideals. In the process, the reader is introduced to the extraordinary lives of multifaceted characters such as Wladyslaw Jablonowski, the son of a Polish woman and a black father who died fighting for France and white supremacy.

Belzec (review)

Reviewed by: Belzec Donna Yarri Belzec (2005). Directed by Guillaume Moscovitz. Distributed by Menemsha Films; www.menemshafilms.com; 100 minutes. [End Page 82] One of the most recent additions to the body of films on the Holocaust, this French film documents the history of a little-known Nazi concentration camp called Belzec, Located in the southeast of Poland, near a small village of the same name, Belzec was one of Poland’s first death camps. In the early 1940s, the Nazis set up a number of labor camps in and around the village, to house Jewish workers building the “Otto Line,” a series of fortifications between the Bug and San rivers, on the border with the Soviet Union. These Jewish labour camps were disbanded in October 1940, and construction of the concentration camp – by workers from nearby Lublin – began on the site shortly thereafter, in November of 1941. By late winter of 1942, the facilities were completed, and in March, Belzec received its first transport of Jews, as part of what would come to be known as Operation Reinhard. Historical details regarding the various transports of the Jews from Lublin and the role of the “blacks”--Ukrainians in black uniforms--are painstakingly researched and revealed in the film, and add powerful imagery to the existing literature on the Holocaust and to the history of Belzec itself, one of the “smaller,” but horrifically “efficient” death camps. In operation for only 10 months, from March to December 1942, the camp’s physical existence, as well as its memory, has largely disappeared from view. The Nazis eliminated all traces of the camp once the Soviet counterattacks began, razing it, relocating a local manor house to the site, and planting trees and crops in its place, in order to disguise it as a farm. Remains of human bodies were found after a visit to the site in 1945, but it wasn’t until excavations in 1997 were being done in preparation for the creation of a monument that the extent of the killings was uncovered. Thirty-one mass graves were discovered, and although it is impossible to determine an official number for the dead at Belzec, it is estimated that at least 600,000 Jews were killed there, including many of the Jewish workers who were forced to eliminate evidence of the site after its closure. With virtually no eyewitnesses to the events inside this particular camp, the documentary attempts to reconstruct the events leading up to its creation, the conditions at the height of its operation, and its ultimate destruction of it by the Nazis. There were only four survivors of this death camp, and one of these is a main focus of Moscovitz’ documentary: Braha Rauffmann, who as a child, escaped from Belzec and spent twenty months hiding in harsh conditions such as a cemetery, a wheat field, and a pigsty, after being secreted away by a sympathetic Polish woman. When she was finally liberated from her hiding space, Rauffmann recalled looking up at the heavens and asking those around her what the stars were. They cried, she remembered, at the reality of a nine-year-old girl who had no memory of the sky. Her dignity and demeanor on screen are in sharp contrast, however, to these terrors of her childhood, and she provides compelling testimony to the realities of the film’s narrative. The film attests to the unwitting role that many Polish citizens played in the operation of this camp. The Poles interviewed for the film include [End Page 83] people who lived close to the camps and those who were hired (some forcibly) by the Germans to build them. Those who did the construction for the camp were kept in the dark as to the purpose of their building, and the workers were even locked up at night; none of the builders came out alive. The daily transports of four trains a day, on which Jews from all over Europe were brought, were known to some extent by those who lived near the camp. Local residents were, to varying degrees, aware of the camp’s atrocities, and numerous sources of Holocaust history contain transcripts of interviews and testimonies...

Lack of KIR2DL4 gene in a fertile Caucasian woman

Killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR2DL4) gene is present in virtually all humans. It encodes a receptor present on uterine and decidual natural killer (NK) cells and some peripheral blood NK cells. Its only known ligand is human leukocyte antigen-G molecule expressed on extravillous trophoblasts invading the decidua. Therefore, KIR2DL4 has been regarded as a molecule important for successful pregnancy. However, a multiparous woman from Africa, lacking KIR2DL4 gene, was described suggesting that this gene is not absolutely required for successful human reproduction. Here, we describe a Polish woman who delivered a child and who is not only lacking KIR2DL4 gene, but also possessing a KIR genotype virtually identical to that of the African woman mentioned above. Their genotypes are compared with few other KIR2DL4-negative genotypes and haplotypes described so far.

“We are competely dependent on them . . .” – relations between the helpers and the hiding as exemplified by Fela Fischbein’s diary

The text is an analysis of the relations between a hiding Jewess, Fela Fischbein, and her landlady, a Polish woman, Katarzyna Dunajewska. In hiding, Fela wrote her diary, which was the basis for the description of her feelings, experiences, her perception of the Poles who helped her, and her change of attitude toward them. The hiding Jewess moves from gratitude to the Poles to disappointment and aversion, which is caused by the attitude of the Poles to the Jews who needed help: financial exploitation of their situation and denouncing them to the Germans.

Measles mimicking HIV seroconversion syndrome: a case report.

IntroductionMeasles is on the rise in the United Kingdom and must be considered in the differential diagnosis of any patient presenting with fever and rash. As a highly infectious disease, identified patients must be isolated in the hospital setting.Case presentationA 28-year-old Polish woman presented ill to the accident and emergency department of a district general hospital. She had painful genital ulceration, oral soreness, fever, and a facial rash. She became hypoxic within 24 hours of presentation and began to tire, thus requiring noninvasive ventilation. Her respiratory symptoms were out of proportion to the findings of her chest radiograph, which remained virtually normal. Human immunodeficiency virus seroconversion syndrome complicated by Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia was high among the differential diagnoses. She was given cotrimoxazole, high-dose steroids, broad spectrum antibiotics, and anti fungal cover.Human immunodeficiency virus polymerase chain reaction came back as negative and her symptoms resolved within 10 days of presentation. She was taken off all treatment and discharged home feeling well. Serological measles was confirmed as part of a viral screen, but its clinical suspicion was low.ConclusionThe presentation of measles in this patient was unique and atypical. With its incidence rising in the United Kingdom, measles must be increasingly considered as a differential diagnosis in patients presenting with fever and rash.

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

m > m ?s z m D H H D O papers on the desk are a settling of accounts, an indictment against Schepp for his neglect of her. In particular, several years earlier, the nearly blind Schepp had undergone laser surgery; able to see clearly, he joined theworld, became a fre quenter of bars, and became infatu ated with a low-life Polish barmaid on whose neck, moreover, was tat tooed the twenty-ninthI Ching sign "Kan," representing the abyss and also the great divide between life and the other side. (Dingsymbol, anyone?) Schepp spends the entire afternoon, as her body goes through stages of decomposition, reading the philological revenge thatDora has spent the night writing. He learns that Dora, who has been consulting theI Ching her entire life, had known of this infatuation and had been enjoying a friendshipwith the Polish woman. Moreover, she had been planning to leave Schepp when shewas struck down. Sounds complicated and even grotesque? Well, maybe none of the foregoing happened, and it was only Schepp's imagination that sup plied the details of Dora's death and his infatuation.Perhaps Schepp resented the bargain he had struck with Dora, whose fears he had impulsively taken on while they were both, in their younger years, viewing Arnold B?cklin's Island of the Dead? Perhaps, Walter Mitty-like (Politycki refers often to Schepp's comb-over), he yearned for lifeand escape fromthedaily focuson death Dora imposed on him? Politycki, a "promovierter" aca demic before becoming a full-time writer, knows his metafictional con ventions. Besides textswithin texts (Dora's commentary is appended to a fragment of Schepp's attempt at a novel from before theirmar riage), Politycki has also supplied an alternative ending tohis novella. Or rather an alternative beginning. The troubling smell is still in the air when Schepp enters his study in the morning, Dora is in the same posi tion at thedesk, with her head on a pile of papers before her. This time around, however, it is a Hinrich Schepp who is only contemplating laser surgery and who cautiously makes his way into the roomwith out his glasses, and Dora is only sleeping. As for the smell, Dora is offended at the suggestion that she has neglected her domestic duties, Schepp cautions her against becom ingupset, because ofher headaches. Though the two of them do not discover the source of the smell, perhaps it is their rottenmarriage? There ismuch here that leaves one unsatisfied, butMatthias Politycki's ambitious novella shows there is still lifein thisclassic genre. ElizabethPowers New York Thomas Pynchon. Inherent V?ce. New York. Penguin. 2009. 370 pages. $27.95. isbn978-1-59420-224-7 Graduate students across the land are undoubtedly outlining theobvi ous similarities in theme, style, and structure between Thomas Pyn chon's 1966 novel, The Crying of Lot 49, and InherentVice. Both have mysterious, perhaps nonexistent secret organizations conspiring to do something not entirely clear; characterswho disappear or are dis appeared; comic names thatwould embarrass Ben Jonson; a general atmosphere ofmalaise; central char acters on a reluctant quest to find the truth;mazes of speculations, hints, and cryptic revelations that often dead-end forboth characters and readers; and governing prin ciples (entropy in the first,the title . _ _ ^-. _-t syndrome in the second). Both have ?B!? Wiki siteswith indices of characters l^ESi and page-by-page annotations. What graduate students may ^Hral not realize, or admit?and some Hh early reviewers like Louis Menand IH^?I in theNew Yorkerwere reluctant to HB! say?is that while Inherent Vice is BBnl more thantwiceas longas Lot49, I^BB it is exponentially duller,and any ^BBI effortused to compare thenovels is ^HHj wasted.Theenergy ofLot 49'sprose flBBI has settled into a bland uniformity. IBBi UnlikeOedipa Maas in theearIBBI liernovel, who has a vision ofwhat ^BBI America might have become before ^BH it is threatened by themysterious HH Tristero, Vice's detective Doc Spor- ^HB tellois "caughtup in a low-level j^^BI bummer he couldn't find away out IHR of,abouthow thePsychedelic Six- ^^Bi ties, this littleparenthesis of light, iBB might close afterall, and all be lost, ^BB taken back Into darkness...

‘Where the devil can't succeed, he'll send a woman’: Polish–Ukrainian families in Ukrainian political fiction, c. 1869–1939

The seven decades between 1869 and 1939 saw ongoing publication of Ukrainian novels that focused attention upon the question of Polish–Ukrainian intermarriages. These politically motivated works aimed at stemming nationally diverse unions through discoursing practices that alleged the existence of a Polish conspiracy to ensure mixed families would become Polish. The books commonly provided visions of hell to symbolize these relationships. At the same time, they portrayed the Polish woman as a devil who brings discord as well as material and moral ruin to a family. To see to it that Ukrainians do not marry Poles the authors emphasized social and cultural incompatibility. They also desired that the Ukrainian partner in any such marriage should be nationally assertive. The texts discussed were all inspired by early modern religious polemical literature that had sought to curtail religious conversion as well as inter-confessional marriages.

Severe bleeding and miscarriages in a hypofibrinogenemic woman heterozygous for the γAla82Gly mutation

We report a case of hypofibrinogenemia caused by heterozygosity for gamma Ala82Gly in a 69-year-old Polish woman with severe bleeding tendency and a history of six miscarriages. She suffered from frequent mucocutaneous bleedings, epistaxes requiring therapeutic interventions, prolonged bleedings after tooth extractions and surgical interventions. Her mother and sister had bleeding tendency. Fibrinogen levels ranged from 0.93 to 2.0 g/l (von Clauss method). Fibrinogen antigen levels determined by immunonephelometry were about 2 g/l. No other coagulation, platelet or liver function tests yielded abnormal results. Antiphospholipid syndrome was excluded. This report suggests that the fibrinogen gamma Ala82Gly mutation could have variable clinical presentation.

Un grito en el silencio, la poesía sobre el Holocausto en lengua sefardí: Estudio y antología by Shmuel Refael

affluent Polish woman who gives the couple a lift expresses admira tion fortheir lifestyle:"You have no things,no lug-jij,credit cards,monii, you're just travllin. Free from all the constant eating and schittingof theworld. You have no ideawhat a messch itall isch." This precocious, iconoclastic Polish literaryphenom enon evocatively portrays global ized angst in late-capitalist societies. RaymondTaxas Stanford University Pascal Quignard. La barque silen cieuse Paris. Seuil. 2009. 238 pages. 18. isbn978-2-02-099109-4 Best known forhis novel Tous les matins du monde (1991; Eng. All the World's Mornings, 1992), whose film adaptation he co-scripted, Pas cal Quignard has been a prolific writer since 1969.He has gradually developed a unique style, aphoris tic and fragmentary,blending ele ments of thenovel, essay, historical, and autobiographical genres. In2002 he began a series of books, Dernier royaume (Last kingdom), that com bine his distinctly evocative style with the various thematic elements of his previous work. The firstof these books, Les ombres errantes (The wandering shadows), received the prestigious PrixGoncourt. The sixth of theseries,La barquesilencieuse(The silent skiff),is made up of eighty-six very short chapters,most ofwhich revolve around the morbid imagery suggested by the title.The various meditations on theprocess of dying include theauthor's own brushwith death after a heart attack in 1997: "Crachant le sang, traine sur mon chariot d'h?pital ... je commencais de mourir" (Spittingblood, dragged along onmy hospital gurney, Iwas starting to die). While otherwriters might have found a new incentive to celebrate life after the traumatic experience of contemplating their own imminentdemise, Quignard is fascinated by thevisions he encoun tered, going so far as to claim: "Je decouvris que c'etait agreable de mourir. II y a une extase du mourir" (I discovered it was pleasant todie. There is an ecstasy todying). Perhaps as a consequence, the other recurring themes in this book include a defense of the right to choose the time and manner of one's own death. Quignard provides examples related to the tradition of philosophic suicide, which trans forms the blind terrorofmortality into an act of free will. Interestingly enough, for a writer who so elo quentlymakes use of religious imag es and metaphors, Quignard vigor ously upholds themoral value of atheism: "Si l'atheisme est la pointe extreme de l'individualisation des etreshumains, le suicide est lepoint extreme de la liberte humaine" (If atheism is the extreme limit of human individuality, suicide is the extreme limit of human freedom). Unsurprisingly, the act ofwriting is also celebrated: "Ecrire des romans ?te les fers. Les romans imaginent une autre vie" (To write novels is to break free of one's chains. Novels = conjure up a differentlife). = As he constantly shiftsbetween = themes, places, and historical peri- = ods, Quignard often seems to be = free-associating, which produces an = eruditehodgepodge ofhistorical and = literary anecdotes, fragments from = classical mythology, excerpts from = the lives of religious saints andmar- = tyrs, grotesque talesof sex and death, = and hauntinglymelancholy accounts = of lost love.While many of these = fragmentsprovide moments of fasci- = nating reading, others seem tedious = and repetitive,inspiteof theauthor's = elegant concision. Alternately wry = and moving, Quignard's aphorisms = at times approach the brilliance of = the seventeenth-century writer La = Rochefoucauld. However, after fin- = ishing this latestexercise in fragmen- = tary literature, many readersmight = come tomiss the timewhen Pascal = Quignard was writing realnovels. = EdwardOusselin = WesternWashington University = Quignard has graduallydeveloped a unique style, aphoristicand fragmentary, blending elementsof the novel, essay, historical, and autobiographical genres. ShmuelRefael.Un grito en el silencio, E la poesi'a sobre el Holocausto en E lengua sefardf: Estudio y antologi'a. E Barcelona. Tirocino. 2008. 341 pages. E 38. isbn 978-84-935671-0-1| In Un grito en el silencio (A scream E in silence), Shmuel Refael, child of E Greek survivors of the Holocaust, E writes: "My destiny and thehistory E of theHolocaust seem to be inter- E mingled... forever." Refael's lifewas E not an easy one, forhe lived the trag- E edy sufferedby his own parents and E theSephardic communities of theold = Ottoman Empire. He had first-hand E knowledge of the oral and written E narratives and poems createdbothby E survivors and...

„...Zupełnie zdani jesteśmy na nich...” Relacja ratujących z ukrywanymi na przykładzie dziennika Feli Fischbein

Tekst jest analizą relacji ukrywającej się Żydowki, Feli Fischbein z jej gospodynią, Polką – Katarzyną Dunajewską. Fela pisze w ukryciu dziennik, ktory stał się podstawą opisu jej uczuć, doświadczeń, postrzegania pomagających jej Polaków i zmianie stosunku do nich. Ukrywająca się Żydówka przechodzi od wdzięcznośći wobec Polaków do rozgoryczenia i niechęci, na co ma wpływ stosunek Polaków do potrzebujących pomocy Żydow - wykorzystywanie materialne ich sytuacji, a także wydawanie ich Niemcom.

T01-O-11 Sexuality of Polish women

The aim of the study was to collect information as regards of the sexual life of women in Poland and their opinions on sex. Herein research encompasses the representative group of 1019 Polish women in the age from 18 to 59. They unaided completed specially prepared questionnaire. Maturation of the Polish women, who currently are between 18 and 59, most frequently took place between 12 and 14 years old (45%). Until the age of 15 the most popular sexual experience was masturbation, seeing exhibitionist (13%) and touching genitals (9%). Every second Polish woman starts the sexual life before 18. Orgasm is most often achieved by vaginal intercourse (80%) or by stimulation of clitoris (21%). 8% of all women have never experienced orgasm and the most frequent sexual problems include: decrease of sexual needs (30%) and rare orgasm (21%). The most commonly used contraception method is interrupted intercourse (50%) and condoms (50%). Every third Polish woman avails of oral contraception. Nearly every fifth Polish woman does not use any contraception. Most of the Polish women conduct an active sexual life, especially in the age 25-34. They generally accept their sexuality. Sex among Polish women is perceived as something natural, as natural need of every human being. It seems that presently general customs of the Polish women are subject to liberalization. It is reflected both in their declarations as regards of the said subject but also in the opinions concerning celibacy of priests.

An American Heroine in the French Resistance: The Diary and Memoir of Virginia d'Albert-Lake (review)

Reviewed by: An American Heroine in the French Resistance: The Diary and Memoir of Virginia d’Albert-Lake M. R. D. Foot An American Heroine in the French Resistance: The Diary and Memoir of Virginia d’Albert-Lake. Edited by Judy Barrett Litoff. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8232-2581-X. Maps. Photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Index. Pp. xxxviii, 270. $29.95. This is a tale of quiet heroism, most of it in the heroine's own words, of [End Page 260] an American girl, a doctor's daughter born in Ohio and brought up in Florida. She married a Frenchman whose mother was English; was with him in Paris when the world war against Hitler began; and stayed with him when he started to help the "Comet" escape line, in which she became a courier. By mere bad luck, she was arrested by the Germans in western Normandy in mid-June 1944 in the company of an evading American airman; and just managed to survive Fresnes and Ravensbrueck. She kept a diary, till she was arrested, which is here reprinted. In the winter after her rescue, she wrote a long account of her prison and concentration camp experiences, in the form of a letter to her recently dead mother. The original memoir seems to have vanished; this too is reprinted, from a typescript in the family's hands. More than sixty years on, both documents have a ghastly immediacy: they bring back Hitler's war at its worst. The diary has been neatly edited by Professor Litoff, who also writes a long introduction; she footnotes events, well known at the time, which may not be readily remembered by today's readership. It presents a straightforward picture of life under Vichy France for someone who disliked it. The male SS guards left most of the immediate care of the prisoners to kapos, who were prisoners themselves. Woman's inhumanity to woman has seldom been as well described: witness the Polish woman kapo, without whose say-so no captive could reach the camp hospital, who kept an iron bar to hand with which she used to strike every other prisoner who came within arm's reach, as she did not want to catch their lice. In the closing stages, several hundred captives were crammed together in a vast marquee, most of them suffering from dysentery and many of them unable to stir to the latrine to relieve themselves. The stench alone must have been all but unbearable—yet they bore it. Virginia Lake's private motto was "never give in": she hung on. Efforts by her American family eventually got through to her, just in time. She and General de Gaulle's niece, Genevieve Anthonioz, were removed from Ravensbrueck to Liebenau near Lake Constance, in a six-day nightmare journey through ruins, late in February 1945. There she slept in sheets, was decently fed, was out of earshot of gunfire, and was liberated late in April. She was reunited with her husband in Paris after the war's end; she recovered her health, they had a son and settled near Dinard. The British gave her an MBE, the Belgians the Medal of King Leopold, and the French the Liberation Medal of Honor, a croix de guerre, and, eventually, the Legion of Honour. She died in 1997 aged eighty-seven. She had simply done what she thought she ought to do. Her story, movingly well told, was well worth putting into print. M. R. D. Foot Nuthampstead, England Copyright © 2007 Society for Military History

Primary amenorrhea in a young Polish woman with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome and Sertoli–Leydig cell tumor: Identification of a new androgen receptor gene mutation and evidence of aromatase hyperactivity and apoptosis dysregulation within the tumor

Primary amenorrhea in 46,XY females can be due to complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS), pure gonadal dysgenesis, 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase deficiency, or mixed gonadal dysgenesis. The present paper describes a new de novo non-sense mutation in exon 1 (K141Z) of the androgen receptor gene (AR) and the expression in CAIS testis of aromatase, estrogen receptors, as well as proliferation- and apoptosis-associated proteins. CAIS is a rare disease characterized by absent virilization in 46,XY individuals and the development of a female phenotype despite normal or even elevated androgen levels. CAIS is usually caused by a mutation in AR, which leads to organ resistance to androgens. Testicular tumors such as Sertoli–Leydig cell tumor often develop in patients with CAIS. The immunohistochemical findings in the testes of our CAIS patient suggest that the high expression of aromatase and other molecular changes in the testis may be responsible for pubertal breast development and the increased risk of testicular tumor.

Women in Early Modern Polish Society, Against the European Background (review)

Reviewed by: Women in Early Modern Polish Society, Against the European Background Sally Parkin Bogucka, Maria, Women in Early Modern Polish Society, Against the European Background, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2004; cloth; pp. xxxiii, 192; 28 b/w illustrations; RRP £45; ISBN 0754632415. Building on her initial 1988 general study of Polish women, Dr. Bogucka's latest work is a translation into English of that publication as well as an expansion of that work. Polish women's history has thus become widely available to historians and specialists in the areas of women/gender studies of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The work is interesting, informative and written in a style that makes it highly accessible, a very welcome addition to the study of Early Modern history and is highly recommendable for all Early Modern scholars. The Introduction provides a precise overview of the rise of women's studies in the European field, citing the move from the Annales School to the influence of feminist writers and groundbreaking work in theoretical, methodological, and methodical reflections on women's history. Stressing the importance of remembering that women's historical experiences have been varied and dependent to a large extent on the social status of each individual woman, Bogucka traces the expansion of the discipline into gender. From the Polish perspective of Early Modern women's studies, Bogucka sees the development of gender study as a social, historico-cultural and political category, the introduction of which is of enormous methodological importance in the historiographical context. Within Polish studies, she cites the necessity of developing standard concepts and terminology, and the requirement of theoretical reflections, particularly studies [End Page 196] which devise terminology. Such a framework is needed in order to promote further research on gender in Poland. Sources are raised as a key problem area. Bogucka implies that research in Poland has so far tended to concentrate on a narrow use of available resources and reiterates the need to expand beyond this. Practising what she preaches throughout the book, Bogucka uses a wide variety of documents and resources. Her study of the phases of women's lives from birth to womanhood, then as married and widowed women, explores women's familial position and position within society throughout the social changes experienced from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The chapter on women and economic life presents the urban and rural experience for women through the dimension of social status and levels of education. Religious life, as elsewhere, offered women pathways that were not bound by the home, and the discussion of the impact of the Reformation on Polish women provides an informative view of women and religion. The great debate about women in Polish society examines the impact of humanist publications and the views of theologians and lawyers on the nature of women. Medical debates, discussions through literary mediums such as satires, poems and ballads, as well as the contributions from women writers on the subject, are shown to have had little impact in Poland. Indeed, statements in favour of women were made at the beginning of the sixteenth century in Poland and, although there were detractors, misogynistic publications were few. The chapter concludes with an overview of Polish witchcraft studies as an aspect of the Early Modern discussion about women, the emphasis on archival research being paramount in what Bogucka regards as a fledgling but highly significant aspect of Polish women's studies. The chapter on patterns of female behaviour cites the mainly positive literature on views of the perfect Polish woman, but makes the point that the literary ideal and the social reality presented a very different picture. Women in Old Poland 'were frequently temperamental persons of an impetuous, vehement, sometimes even adventurous, character.' Learned rather than folk mass culture is the topic of the women and culture chapter, mainly because folk mass culture has undergone very little research in Poland. The education of women in Poland was dependent on social status but no real progress in the education of women was achieved until the end of the sixteenth century. The decline in male education amongst the nobility from the second half of the seventeenth century enabled women to play a greater...

Familial multiple cutaneous and uterine leiomyomas associated with papillary renal cell cancer

Multiple cutaneous and uterine leiomyomas is an autosomal dominant condition that results in benign smooth muscle tumours of the skin and, in females, uterine fibroids. This syndrome overlaps with hereditary leiomyomatosis and renal cell cancer syndrome in which affected individuals may develop the rare type II papillary renal cell cancer, in addition to skin leiomyomas. Recently, heterozygous mutations in the gene encoding fumarate hydratase have been found to underlie both conditions. Fumarate hydratase is an enzyme that catalyses the conversion of fumarate to malate in the Kreb's cycle and may also function as a tumour suppressor gene. We report a family with multiple leiomyomas, uterine fibroids and papillary renal cell cancer. The proband is a 77-year-old Polish woman who developed multiple cutaneous leiomyomas on her right upper arm in her thirties and subsequently underwent a hysterectomy for uterine fibroids in her forties. She has four offspring: her eldest daughter also has skin and uterine leiomyomas with a similar onset; her son has multiple skin leiomyomas and in addition was diagnosed with metastatic papillary renal cell cancer at the age of 50 years; the two youngest daughters are unaffected. DNA sequencing in all the affected individuals disclosed a heterozygous G-->C substitution at nucleotide 173 of the fumarate hydratase gene, that converts an arginine residue (CGA) to proline (CCA). This missense mutation has not been reported previously and is designated R58P. Interestingly, the clinically asymptomatic 20-year-old son of the individual with renal cancer was also found to be heterozygous for R58P. It is likely that he will develop skin leiomyomas in the future but the risk of renal cancer is difficult to predict. Nevertheless, detection of this mutation has important implications for screening and genetic counselling in this and other family members.

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