Teodor Axentowicz (1859-1938) was a renowned Polish-Armenian painter born in Braşov, Hungary (now Romania). His father’s family had Armenian roots and owned a small property in Ceniów (now Tseniv, Ukraine).(Author note: The Armenians had found sanctuary in Poland in the 14th century).  

​     Axentowicz grew up in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) and after finishing high school he spent four years (1878-1882) studying art at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and then went on to Paris to the studio of Carlos Duran.

​     In 1893 Axentowicz went to Kołomyja and Jamno in eastern Ukraine, paying his first visit to the lands of the Hucul (spelling in Polish language, Hutsul in Ukrainian), an ethnographic group of Carpathian highlanders of mixed Ruthenian and Wallachian origin. The region is located in the western part of the Ukraine, in the area of the Eastern Carpathians, at the forks of Prut, Cheremosh and Tisza rivers.

      Map of ethnic Carpathian highlanders. Source: Pinterest.

​    Today the region is located almost entirely in the Ukraine, and to a small extent overlaps with the territory of Romania.  These areas were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for centuries. After the first partition of Poland in 1772, they became part of the Austrian (later Austro-Hungarian) monarchy. In the years 1918–1939 they were once again part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

   Axentowicz, recognized as an illustrator, graphic artist and a superb portraitist by this time in his career, developed a very keen interest in the life, rituals, and traditions of the distinctive Hucul people. He began garnering attention for his paintings of the Hucul’s while still in Paris. In 1895, he settled in Kraków. Based on his sketches from the region, Axentowicz, continued to return to the subject of the Hucul’s throughout his career.  The folk costumes and religious rituals became a recurring theme in Axentowicz’s work, among them, appropriate today, the feast of Candlemas, also known as the feast of Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrated on February 2.

   Teodor Axentowicz. Gromnicza. (Blessed Thunder candle). Oil on canvas. c.1900 Museum of Archdiocese of Katowice
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 In the Polish folk tradition, the feast of Candlemas was also called Matka Boska Gromniczną, or    Gromniczną,  both referrring to Mother of God Thunder Candle. The name derives from the candle that was brought to church on this day, solemnly lit and kept for a lifetime as a means of protection. It was believed that this candle protected against storms and thunder, hence the name "gromnica," from the word “grom” meaning thunder. A storm with lightning and thunder was a great threat to thatched huts without lightning rods. One strike of lightning could destroy the achievements of a lifetime so it was with a feeling of helplessness that a family watched the luminous zigzags of lightning against a dark sky. In that helplessness, a candle, blessed on a feast devoted to the Blessed Mother, was reached for and put it lit at the window in the hope of safety and protection. It is a custom that can be dated back to the 9th century. 

Teodor Axentowicz. Na ​Gromnicą . Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie.

Teodor Axentowicz Dziewczyna z Gromnicą. (Girl with Thunder Candle). Date unknown.  Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi

Teodor Axentowicz. Na Gromniczną. On Candlemas. Date unkown.
​     In the paintings, we see children and adults carrying candles to be blessed through a wintery landscape. Axentowicz seems to have more young girls carrying the candles than other individuals. According to custom anyone can carry the candle to the church for blessing, regardless of gender and age, but in practice it was mostly done by girls and women.

Teodor Axentowicz. Na Gromniczną. Powrót z cerkwi na Huculszczyźnie.( On Candlemas. Return from the Orthodox church in Hucul region). C.1910

The Hucul region lay within Poland’s borders from the time of Kazimierz the Great( reigned 1333 to 1370) to World War II except for the time of the Partitions. The people were typically of the Greek Catholic and Eastern Orthodox faith, both of which would celebrate Candlemas but at different times on the calendar. 

These paintings are only a few among many of the painting completed by Axentowicz of the custom of bringing a candle to be blessed on the feasts of Candlemas. It is said that it was he who “discovered” and subsequently, uncovered, the Hucul’s to the world through his paintings.

​http://www.wiki.ormianie.pl/index.php/Teodor_Axentowicz

​     With the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary on February 2nd,  also known as Candlemas, the Christmas period in Poland was officially over. Instead of young boys caroling along country roads, the snowy roads began to fill with the sound of jangling of bells from horse-drawn sleighs taking the rich and famous to house parties, fancy dress balls and winter weddings.

Kulig. Juliusz Kossak c.1887

    These kuligs, the famous sleigh rides made famous by the Polish aristocracy, rose in popularity in the 16th century and were a large part of Zapusty, or carnival time, that period of overindulgence and fun before the strict fast of Lent. Looking back to a few centuries before the 1600’s, however, this carnival time began soon after the Feast of Three Kings and was much shorter in length. 
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Completely forgotten now among the older customs and traditions of Poland was a period called przedpoście, or pre-fast, and it was essentially a period of preparing for Lent with another period of fasting and abstinence.  This prequel to the forty days of Lent took shape in the times of Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604 AD) when the church instituted a three-week period of additional fasting as a way of reminding the faithful of the very serious, and quickly approaching period of Lent, and that they should prepare through increased prayer, fasting, and acts of penance. The last day of feasting and revelry was called Niedziela Zapustna, or Niedziela Starozapustna, meaning the last Sunday of carnival time. In church liturgy it is known as Septuagesima Sunday, the third Sunday before the beginning of Lent.  If we look at the calendar that would be today, January 31. 

     ​We know this pre-Lenten period was taken very seriously during the reign of Boleslaw the Brave (992-1025) so much so that if someone was caught eating meat on a fast day, their teeth were in danger of being knocked out as punishment! This period of fasting was still in effect in the 14th century at the court of Queen Jadwiga Jagiełło (reigned 1384-1399) and King Jagiełło through the extant records of the Keeper of the Treasury from the years 1388-1417.

     ​In the year 1394, he dates and documents the following events:

   On February 2, the day of the Purification, for the queen’s supper: 30 partridges, 4 geese and 3 rabbits.

    February 3, Małdrzyk, official servant of the Queen, was sent to Moravia with letters and was given small money for expenses……

     March 2, Niedziela Zapustna, the last Sunday of carnival, the queen and king ate with Spytek of Melstzyna, the administrator of the city of Kraków, along with two Mazowian princes and a variety of other princes: 20 pigs, 40 cheeses for placki and pirogów (Author note: that is the spelling used in the accounts and it should also be noted that close to 200 members of the court and visiting guests often sat down to eat for dinner)

     March 3, Fresh fish for the queen, as she did not eat meat, and 30 herrings.
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     A week later, the keeper of the treasury mentions “Week 2 of the fast.” And subsequently on March 15, “Week 3 of the fast.”   

Herring was a fish affordable for king and peasant alike and one of the main staples of Lent.

The origin of the pre-fast is not exactly known but assumed to have come from the need to precisely calculate the forty days of Lent by excluding the Sundays and Saturdays which at the time were free from fasting. As a result, the beginning of Lent shifted forward on the calendar. With reforms in the church liturgical calendar in later centuries, the pre-fast period was removed and a greater emphasis placed on Lent itself. With that change, the aristocracy of the 16th century could enjoy their kulig’s a bit longer through the winter months.
 
 Source: Życie domowe Jadwigi i Jagiełły z regestrów skarbowych z lat 1388-1417(Home life of Jadwiga and Jagiełło from the treasurer’s registers from 1388-1420). Aleksander Przeździecki.
 

Wednesday, January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.  It is a day designated by the United Nations General Assembly to mark the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp to honor those that died there and to recognize others who were victims of Nazism.
​Today let us remember the murder of Poland’s citizenry in what historians call the Palmiry Massacre.

Seventy-eight years ago, almost to this very day, on January 23, 1943, Hans Frank, Governor of the General Government of occupied Poland wrote in his diary:
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“I would like to stress one thing: we must not be squeamish when we learn that a total of 17,000 people [in the Government General] have been shot. These persons who were shot were nothing more than war victims.” (1)

     When Hans Frank became the General Governor, the pre-planned extermination of the Polish nation was quickly undertaken. Warsaw, as the capital of Poland, filled with patriots and resistance groups, was targeted with a series of executions that took place on December 7 and 8, 1939 in the Kampinos forest north of Warsaw near a small village called Palmiry.  The Germans shot 70 people the one day and 80 people the next.  A few days later, on December 14, another 46 people were murdered.  Throughout  1940, executions in Palmiry continued.

     The largest number of executions at one time at Palmiry occurred in June as part of what the German’s called the Extraordinary Pacification Action AB (Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion).  Mass arrests were made throughout all of Poland among Poland’s intellectuals, social activists and politicians – anyone that could possibly become the nucleus of rallying the people together in opposition to the occupation of Poland.  In Warsaw the arrested victims were taken mainly to Pawiak prison on Dzielna Street as well as Mokotów prison on Rakowiecka St. (Photo above is a memorium outside Pawiak prison. Photo by Edward Knab)  It was from these prisons that the inmates were later taken outside of Warsaw to the Kampinos forest and shot. 
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​     Before their execution, death pits 2.5-3 meters deep and 30 meters long were carefully prepared by members of the Hitlerjugend, a German youth group, in a clearing in the forest.  Transports from the prisons took place in the murky hours of dawn. The inmates were allowed to take their personal belongings previously deposited in the prison property room, as well as suitcases, backpacks and food packages, creating the illusion of being transported to a concentration camp. The arrival of trucks at the edge of forest place revealed the true intention of the executioners.

​The prisoner’s hands were bound, their eyes covered and then led in groups to the clearing, where they were placed at edge of the prepared pit and shot.  On the days of June 20 and 21, 1940, 358 innocent Polish citizens, including 64 women, were shot. 

    The second-largest execution in terms of the number of victims was carried out on 17 September 1940 and claimed the lives of 200 human beings. Additional murders went on in Palmiry through 1941, not just of people of Warsaw but from surrounding towns and villages as well. A total of 21 different groups of individuals were murdered at this location. The bodies were covered with earth and the pits concealed by planting shrubs and trees over them.

     Polish foresters who ignored the ban on entering the forest became the most important witnesses to the crime. Their system of marking the death pits made it possible to find many of the graves after the war. On November 25, 1945, headed by the Polish Red Cross, exhumations of the burial sites was  begun and completed by  June 10, 1946. They exhumed 1,720 bodies of which only about 400 were identified. Buried there as well were bodies of victims of executions in other regions of Poland in subsequent years of the war to bring the number to 2115. (2) ​In 1948, the site became a memorial cemetery. In the 1970s, a museum was opened nearby to disseminate information concerning the atrocities perpetrated in Palmiry. In 2011, the museum was moved to a new building and adopted the name “Palmiry Museum and Memorial Site.”  

Today it serves to honor the loss of innocent lives.  It serves as a stark reminder of the crimes committed by Nazi Germany against the Polish nation during the Second World War, what  Hans Frank considered the premeditated murder of  the people at Palmiry and the 15,000 other Polish lives in the General Government as "nothing but war victims."

On this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, let us remember these events and honor their memory.  Cześć ich pamięci.

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(1) Partial Translation of Document  2233-AA-PS Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression Volume IV: FRANK DIARY, Official Meeting.  Warsaw, 25 January 1943.  Meetings of Departmental Chiefs.
(2) Insytut Pamięci Narodowe.  https://przystanekhistoria.pl/pa2/teksty/62949,Tylko-sosny-byly-swiadkami-Egzekucje-w-Palmirach.html

Credit for photos 2,3,4 Instytut Pamieci Narodowe. Institute of National Remembrnce.

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On the twelfth day of Christmas, the Lord gave us the Feast of Epiphany. 
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The word Epiphany takes its name from the Greek epiphania, meaning, revelation or to reveal. The church calendar reminds us it is the day on which the Christ Child was made manifest to the world as the Son of God. The day is also called the Feast of Three Kings because it was to the Three Kings that the Christ Child was first revealed and as such, revealed to the whole world. 

Carolers in front of Narodzenia Najswietszej Maryi Panny (Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church) in  Łapczycy (southern Poland)1925

The Feast closes the official twelve days of Christmas in Poland but the day brought out a new wave of carolers that took to the roads of Poland to sing their songs of the wonders associated with the birth of Christ. In remembrance of the Star of Bethlehem that hung over the manger the night of the birth of Christ, the star that led the Wise Men to the manger, young Polish boys dressed up as the Three Kings and went caroling from house to house. If it was impossible to imitate the rich garb of the kings, the boys simply wore their usual clothes with homemade paper crowns on their heads to denote them as the Three Kings. One of the boys smudged his face with ashes to signify him as the dark skinned king, Balthazar, and also carried a homemade colored box to signify carrying the gift of myrrh.

 The caroling group on the Feast of Three Kings, always traveled with a large homemade star, the Gwiazda Betlejemska, the Star of Bethlehem, perched on top of a long pole. It was made from thick glazed paper or straw attached to a frame and was lit from within by a candle at the center or, in later years, by a light bulb powered by a battery. Sometimes someone dressed as an angel tagged along or yet another boy accompanied them playing the concertina, but most of the time the boys sang together a capella. And, as one elderly gentleman recounted to Polish folklorists about his caroling days, "one of the kings also carried a stick to ward off the dogs that roamed the countryside.”  (Photo to left: Star carried by carolers 1986. Museum Etnograficzne w Rzeszowie)
The carolers did not enter inside the house as often happened with other carolers but, instead, stood outside a window.  The homemade star, glowing in the night and voices raised in song about the Three Kings,  such as Mędrcy świata (Wise Men of the World)  drew the inhabitants to the window.

Mędrcy świata, monarchowie,
gdzie śpiesznie dążycie?
Powiedzcież nam Trzej Królowie,
chcecie widzieć Dziecię?
 
Wise men of the world, monarchs,
where are you hurrying?
Tell us,  Three Kings,
do you want to see the Child?
 
When they had finished their repertoire of songs, the homeowner would step out of the cottage and asked the carolers: Where are you from, oh kings? The carolers always replied: Why, we are from the east and looking for the Child.”

The carolers were always rewarded for their entertainment with a treat of some kind; a piece of sweet bread, small money and oftentimes, something hot to drink. Then the carolers moved on to the next house because everyone in the village had to be visited or it would cause offense.  Everyone felt blessed when the carolers visited their home.

​December 28. Feast of the Holy Innocents, recognized as the first Christian martyrs. On this day the Catholic church commemorates the execution of all children two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem under the orders of Herod, king of Judea, in an attempt to kill the baby Jesus, the newborn King of the Jews. According to the apocryphal legends of the New Testament, the edict by Herod led to the Fight into Egypt by the Holy Family in order to keep the newborn safe from Herod’s murderous intent. The Flight into Egypt has been depicted over the centuries by artists all over the world including Polish art and artists​.
 To the left is the famous  15th century painting by unknown Polish artist titled Mistrz Tryptyk Dominikanskiego (Dominincan Tryptich) from the 15th century located at the National Museum in Kraków. The image became Christmas stamp in Poland in 1974.

Another image is by a later artist named Piotr Stachiewicz that depicts the fleeing family wandering through a Polish village, receiving a bow from a local peasant.

The event was also a theme for Polish folk artists such as this sculpture by artist Tadeusz Adamski.

One of the most popular Polish religious folk legends regarding the Holy Family fleeing from Herod focuses on the hazel tree. The Blessed virgin and Infant hide under its low spreading branches and are saved from King herod's assasins. Perhaps because of its history in protecting the infant Jesus, the leaves of the hazel tree were often used in folk medicine in the care of children, adding it to their bath water to help the children grow strong and to walk early.

Another theme that takes place during the flight was The Rest on the Flight to Egypt, also the subject of paintings by artists around the world. It also rooted itself in Polish legends and beliefs. One is about the herb known as sage. During the time when the Holy Family was fleeing to Egypt from Herod, they took rest near a clump of flowering sage. In order to make the rest of the Holy Family pleasant, the plant scattered all its flowers before Jesus, creating a sweet and aromatic carpet. As a reward, God gave the plant the power to heal all diseases. Ever since, the herb has been tied to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

     It is known that the menu for the Christmas Eve meal, the Wigilia supper, varied in Poland depending on the region, family customs and individual taste.  After that, tradition dictated that twelve dishes appear on the table(or as many as a family could afford)  and that the dishes be prepared from the bounty of the land – such as grains and cereals, poppy seeds, honey, mushrooms, etc.

     The Wigilia meal was eaten with great abundance and variety, not to mention splendor, at the tables of kings and magnates who dined on silver plates with food prepared by personal chefs and served by a retinue of servants. In rural cottages, the inhabitants were more likely to eat out of  wooden bowls with food planted, harvested and prepared by their own hands. The common denominator, however, between the tables of the rich and famous and that of the poor and humble was that meat was absent from the table and the meal always began by sharing the opłatek, the thin wafer symbolic of bread and brotherly love.  After that, the differences could be enormous, except for the one other commonality shared between the two distinct classes on Christmas Eve – the presence of nuts at the table, and more specifically, of walnuts.

     In Polish, the walnut (Juglans regia) is called orzech włoski. When translated it means “Italian nut” but its name identifies the way it came to Poland – via Central Asia to Europe to Italy and then to Poland in the 12th and 13 centuries. Juglans regia properly refers to the English walnut and has been around for thousands of years.  When we pay close attention to the customs and traditions of Christmas, the fruit of the walnut tree appears very often, in various ways. The walnut, along with the apple, was one of the oldest forms of decorating the podłaźnik, the earliest form of evergreen branch hung in the home that was the centuries old precursor to the Christmas tree. Decorating the podłaźnik with walnuts was not accidental but associated with the beliefs of the times. The walnut shells were seen as containing something precious and magical, a gift from the gods. Walnuts became a symbol of fertility and reproduction, not just in nature, causing bountiful harvests in fields and orchards, but also among people.

     Believed to bring about marriages and generate love, they were given or exchanged among young adults during Christmas and New Year season. We see it again later playing a role in wedding customs hanging on the róga weselna, the wedding branch, which was decorated with apples and nuts also as a symbol of fertility and reproduction.

      In ancient times it was believed that at this time of the year of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and the longest night, the dead come back to their family home to take a seat at the table. It was at one time a meal honoring the dead. The dead ancestors were seen as powerful forces that linked heaven and earth, bridging this world with the next, and were seen as the patrons of abundance, fertility and a bountiful harvest. At a time when the world around them had gone cold and dead, the ancients offered their deceased ancestors special foods, believing that in doing so, they would bring life back to a cold, dead earth. A venerable place included among those foods were walnuts with their secret interior.

     With the passage of thousands of years and the advent of Christianity, that night of the ancestors continues to be a special meal shared by family. In Poland it is called Wigilia and we can still see remnants of those very distant times when we look at the traditional foods served that night.  Among the twelve dishes of Wigilia, a bowl of kutia (sometimes spelled kucya, or kucia), made with walnuts, honey, wheat grains and poppy seeds (all foodstuffs revered by the ancients), harkens back to these distant times. It was, and still is, a ritual dish in many parts of Poland, especially in the Eastern borderlands, the Kresy Wschodnie, at the Christmas Eve table.  This sweet dish is generally served last. Among poorer households, if kutia was not served, the end of the Christmas Eve meal required at least cracking a handful of nuts, and peering inside to search their luck believing that the coming year will be like the first split nuts. A whole one portended health and happiness in the coming year. Broken ones were ominous signs that suggested illness or death in the family.

    Walnuts are mentioned regularly in the records of Zygmunt (Sigismund) I, who reigned in the years 1506-1548. Five hundred years later, they can still be found on Christmas Eve tables in Poland and in Polonia today, having withstood the test of time. 

Photo by Sophie Hodorowicz Knab

     On October 26, 1939 , Hans Frank, Governor of the General Government in occupied Poland, required all Poles from 18-60 years of age to be employed.

     That edict, issued by the Labor Department and its leader, Hans Frank, which was called arbeitspflict or “work obligation” is more commonly known as the Forced Labor Decree. It marks the day of the beginning of mass deportation of Polish men and women to Germany to work in the armaments industry, as agricultural laborers or wherever the German authorities dictated how the laborers were to be employed to maintain the German war economy. It began the massive enslavement of Polish men, women and children for involuntary forced labor. Among the almost two million Poles sent to Germany, more than half a million were women with their average age around 20.
   
     By December 14 of that same year  the required age for forced labor was changed to that of 14 and it is a known fact that children even younger than that were often forced to work side by side with adults.
   
    By March 7, 1940 Hans Frank noted in his diary: 24,000 Polish women had been sent for agricultural work to the Reich.

   On October 26, 1939 , Hans Frank, Governor of the General Government in occupied Poland, required all Poles from 18-60 years of age to be employed.

     That edict, issued by the Labor Department and its leader, Hans Frank, which was called arbeitspflict or “work obligation” is more commonly known as the Forced Labor Decree. It marks the day of the beginning of mass deportation of Polish men and women to Germany to work in the armaments industry, as agricultural laborers or wherever the German authorities dictated how the laborers were to be employed to maintain the German war economy. It began the massive enslavement of Polish men, women and children for involuntary forced labor. Among the almost two million Poles sent to Germany, more than half a million were women with their average age around 20.
By December 14 of that same year  the required age for forced labor was changed to that of 14 and it is a known fact that children even younger than that were often forced to work side by side with adults.
     
    By March 7, 1940 Hans Frank noted in his diary: 24,000 Polish women had been sent for agricultural work to the Reich.

​    By May 10, 1940 Hans Frank writes: “It has now been decreed that compulsion may be exercised.”   

    The people of Poland were subjected to constant surveillance by the racist bureaucratic and policing apparatus of the Wehrmacht, labor office, SS and Gestapo. They were rounded up on the streets, coming out of church or boarding a bus or train, placed in temporary holding centers and sent to Germany against their will. While in Germany, all Poles were required to wear a patch on their clothes with the letter P.

    According to Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression Office of the United States Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Volume I Chapter 10…the basic elements of the Nazi foreign labor policy consisted of mass deportation and mass enslavement. It was a policy of underfeeding and overworking foreign laborers, of subjecting them to every form of degradation and brutality. It was a policy which compelled foreign workers and prisoners of war to manufacture armaments and to engage in other operations of war directed against their own countries. It was, in short, a policy which constituted a flagrant violation of the laws of war and the laws of humanity.

   You can read a summary of the activities of Hans Frank at: Trial Brief of Hans Frank. Cornell University Law Library P.13 and 14
http://reader.library.cornell.edu/docviewer/digital?id=nur:00957#page/17/mode/1up
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​​Photo of Polish slave laborer and his family liberated by the 1st US Army near Meggan Germany. Photo credit: Still Picture Branch National Archives in College Park, Maryland. More about the issue of forced labor can be found in: Wearing the Letter P: Polish women as Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany 1939-1945 by Sophie Hodorowicz Knab. Hippocrene Books, Inc.

This is just an excerpt and color photo from one of the new entries in my revised and updated edition of Polish Herbs, Flowers and Folk Medicine: Allspice.  It is with much happiness that I can say that I have finished editing the new and revised edition of Polish Herbs, Flowers and Folk Medicine. There are still some tasks to be completed such as preparing the index and finalizing the front and back design of the book before being sent to print. Originally slated to be released in October, Hippocrene Books, Inc. has worked really hard to overcome time lost due to Covid and to make sure the book will be available by the middle of November. Thank you Hippocrene Books!