Poland

Poland is a country in central Europe. It sits on the Baltic Sea in the north and shares borders with Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia. About 38 million people live there, making it one of the larger countries in Europe. The capital is Warsaw, and the official language is Polish.

Most of Poland is made up of flat plains. In fact, the name "Poland" comes from an old Slavic word meaning "people of the fields." The Tatra Mountains rise in the south, along the border with Slovakia. The country has two long rivers, the Vistula and the Oder, which flow north into the Baltic. Winters are cold and snowy, and summers are warm.

Poland became a kingdom more than a thousand years ago, in the year 966, when its first ruler, Mieszko I, became Christian. For centuries, Poland was one of the largest countries in Europe. But in the late 1700s, its neighbors divided up the land, and Poland disappeared from maps for 123 years. It came back as a country in 1918, after World War I.

The worst chapter in Poland's history came during World War II. Nazi Germany invaded in 1939, starting the war in Europe. About six million Polish people died, including nearly all of Poland's Jewish population, who were murdered in the Holocaust. Several of the largest Nazi death camps, including Auschwitz, were built on Polish land.

After the war, Poland was controlled by the Soviet Union and ruled by a communist government. In the 1980s, Polish workers at a shipyard in Gdańsk started a labor union called Solidarity. Led by an electrician named Lech Wałęsa, Solidarity pushed for freedom and free elections. In 1989, the communist government fell. Poland's change helped end communism across eastern Europe.

Poland has produced many famous thinkers and artists. The astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who figured out that Earth orbits the Sun, was born in Poland in 1473. The scientist Marie Curie, who discovered two elements and won two Nobel Prizes, grew up in Warsaw. The composer Frédéric Chopin wrote some of the most loved piano music in the world.

Today Poland is a democracy and a member of the European Union. Tourists visit castles, old town squares, and the quiet forests in the east, which shelter some of the last wild bison in Europe. The country has rebuilt itself again and again, and its people often say that Poland always rises.