During World War II, Polish culture was suppressed by the occupying powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, both of whom were hostile to Poland's people and cultural heritage. Policies aimed at c
Germans looting the Zachęta Museum in Warsaw, summer 1944
Portrait of a Young Man, by Raphael, ca. 1514. Possibly a self-portrait, and if so, the most valuable single piece of art looted by the Nazis in Poland. Formerly in the collection of the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, its whereabouts remain unknown.
Photo of earliest, 1829 portrait of Chopin, by Mieroszewski. Destroyed in Warsaw, September 1939.
Burned ruins of the Great Synagogue of Białystok, after it was torched down by the Germans with approximately 2000 Jews inside, 1941.
Cultural genocide
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Cultural genocide or culturicide is a concept first described by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, in the same book that coined the term genocide. The destruction of culture was a central componen
Polish culture during World War II
…by the occupying powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, both of whom were hostile to Poland's people and cultural heritage. Policies aimed at cultural genocide resulted in the deaths of thousands of scholars and artists, and the theft and destruction of innumerable cultural artifacts. ''The maltreatment of the…
Before and after photographs of the destruction of one of the Buddhas of Bamiyan that were destroyed by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001.