Today is a public holiday in Poland, the Feast of the Assumption, which is an important Catholic celebration, I presume. Though when I asked my friend this morning about the reason for a day off, she mumbled something about the Battle of Warsaw instead. That battle, also known as the Miracle at the Vistula, took place in August (naturally) of 1920 and is considered as the most decisive turn of the Polish-Soviet War. A guy by the name of Józef Piłsudski was one of the Polish commanders. You might have heard of him. Some Polish-Americans think of him as “the George Washington of Poland” with which I must respectfully disagree. Piłsudski was definitely better looking.
But neither one of these occasions can match the truly important event that happened on August 15 in 1898. That day a guy named Jan Wiktor Lesman was born in a podunk little Galician town somewhere in the middle of nowhere. My Polish readers will recognize him as Jan Brzechwa.
And here I can just imagine them emitting loud snorts and feeling sorry for those of you who are not fluent in Polish.
