The Debrief

The Kraków district of Kazimierz is home to the city’s Jewish history and heritage. Before World War II, there were almost 60,000 Jews living in Kraków, around one quarter of the city’s total population.

After the Holocaust, the history of Kraków’s Jews all but comes to a standstill, although just before the fall of communism in 1989, a Jewish cultural festival starts to take place in Kazimierz.

Fast forward to 2008, and the UK’s Prince Charles – now King Charles III – arrives in Kraków to take part in the opening of the Jewish Community Centre. Now, the Jewish community in Kraków continues to grow, and a deeper understanding of Kraków’s Jewish heritage has also called for an updated history of the life and times of Kraków’s Jews.

Debrief host John Beauchamp sits down with Edyta Gawron and Michał Galas from the Institute of Jewish Studies at the Jagiellonian University, the authors and editors of ‘Not only Kroke’, a chronicle of sorts which covers a millennium of Jewish history in Poland’s southern city, the former Royal Capital.

A new exhibition on Polish artistic photography which spans most of the 20th century is on in the southern Polish city of Kraków.

Host John Beauchamp goes to the Museum of Photography in Kraków, where he meets chief curator Dr. Dominik Kuryłek, to take a look at how Polish photography developed from being a documentary tool to having more artistic possibilities.

Photo: Student by Edward Hartwig, ca. 1955. Image courtesy of MuFo Kraków

In this episode, host John Beauchamp is joined in the studio by Tomasz Snażyk, CEO of the Startup Poland Foundation.

We hear the latest on Polish innovation and startups, on where the money is, and which direction Polish startups are currently taking…

The reports mentioned in the podcast can be found at the Startup Poland website here.

At the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, one of the first cities the Russian army advanced on was Chernihiv, some 150km north of the country’s capital Kyiv.

The city was sieged for almost 40 days, eventually overcoming Russian forces, which had devastated the city with constant shelling.

Fast forward to over a year later, and John Beauchamp is in the studio with Chernihiv resident, Dr. Volodymyr Pylypenko, one of the curators of a photo exhibition in Warsaw which documents the Russian siege back in early 2022.

Figures show a comeback of amateur – or ham radio – especially during the Pandemic and now during the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. So how can amateur radio be useful when we have everything we need to communicate in the palm of our hands? 

An ambassador of sorts for Polish amateur radio in the Mazovian region and beyond, Maciek “Miles” Muszalski (SQ5EBM) joins John Beauchamp (HF5B) in the studio.

What can ham radio do which other modes of communication can’t? And what is EmCom? All is revealed in this episode.

Clubs and associations mentioned in the podcast:

• MASR
• SP5POT
• SP5KAB
• Polish Amateur Radio Union

The Museum of Warsaw is taking a look at the rebuilding of the Polish capital after World War II. After the city was decimated by the German occupiers, all that was left was rubble and a population of under 20,000, down from 1.3 million before the war.

It’s this rubble – over 20 million cubic metres of it – which takes on a new meaning when we think of Warsaw’s rise from the ashes… John Beauchamp is in the studio with architectural researcher Dr. Adam Przywara from the Museum of Warsaw.

More information about the exhibition can be found at the museum’s website here.

Below: Gruz nad Warszawą (Rubble over Warsaw), artist Tymon Borowski. Image courtesy of Museum of Warsaw.

Would you believe that Poland is one of the pioneering countries of electronic music?

Back in the 1950s, Polish Radio was one of the first broadcasters in the world to set up a dedicated experimental sound studio, which hosted some outstanding composers, including Krzysztof Penderecki.

It closed around 2004, but its legacy lives on. So much so, that the famous Black Room at the Experimental Studio is now to be recreated at the new Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw when it opens its new building in downtown Warsaw in 2024.

Join John Beauchamp and his guests Paweł Nowożycki and Jolanta Woch from MSN Warszawa

Interesting links:

• PRES Facebook Group
• Włodzimerz Kotoński
• Oskar Hansen
• Polish Radio Experimental Studio
• Polish Radio Experimental Studio – Podcast from Culture.pl
• Short newsreel (in Polish) on PRES when it first opened

How do we know what the past sounded like, even though there wasn’t any recording equipment or other such audio gadgetry back in the 19th century and beyond?

How can we be sure about our perception of past sounds? Well, there might not be a single answer to these questions, but one academic, Dr Marta Michalska, is looking at what historical Warsaw might have sounded like…

She joins host John Beauchamp in the studio for this episode.

Interesting links:

• Unseen Soundwalks
• Marta’s Instagram page where you can follow what she’s up to
• Centre of Community Archives
• National Digital Archives

When you think of the southern Polish city of Kraków you generally tend to envisage the grand market square and the renaissance architecture which surrounds it.

However, the city is not just all about 16th-century glam. For those more architecturally inclined, there’s a new guide to Kraków’s more recent developments with a book on the city’s modernist gems.

Host John Beauchamp is joined by Michał Wiśniewski from the Architecture Institute to explore the modernist traces in Kraków.

More on Kraków and its modernist (and post-modern!) architecture can be found here.

It’s been a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, driving millions from their homes and plunging the country into war.

The sacrifice Ukrainians have had to make is huge as brave country continues to resist. But it’s not all about fighting and warfare. The scale of human tragedy – yet also of hope – is hard to fathom.

Thankfully, we can catch a glimpse of what’s going on in Ukraine thanks to the work of many freelance journalists risking life and limb to bring us the latest news.

Host John Beauchamp speaks to journalist and documentary maker Paweł Kwiecień about his many trips to Ukraine in 2022, what he witnessed, and what he thinks the future holds…