Jan Miłosz

The war brings infinite suffering, death and destruction. Those who survive it have to deal with diseases that follow. In the 1940s and 1950s, county doctors wrote reports on infectious disease incidence for the Department of Health of the Regional Government in Poznań. The article comprises the presentation and comparison of parallel reports from the years 1946 and 1953. Based on that, it makes an attempt to explain the higher incidence rate of infectious diseases in some parts of Greater Poland based on the historical context of this period. For the year 1946, the data describe 23 counties. Data for the year 1953 include 26 counties. Due to the comparability of information, the article includes data only for rural counties. Typical diseases of the period were typhoid, tuberculosis and diphtheria, but the high mortality rate can also be explained by exhaustion, poor hygiene and malnutrition among the migrating masses of people. The analyses conducted indicate that the strongest relationship can be observed between infectious diseases and the location of prisoners’ and work camps and the migration of people going through the stage points of the National Repatriates Office.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have operated in Greater Poland for over a hundred years. Each sub-period of this century was full of events affecting both the whole community and its individual members: their early days in the interwar period — partially as a legal association, but also as a group facing misunderstanding and attempts to ban its operation; the period of Nazi occupation — full of tragic events for both the whole community and individual members who fell victim to the system and wore purple triangle badges in concentration camps; post-war period — yet another stage of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ functioning in Greater Poland. This article details their history until the year 1950, until which point the Jehovah’s Witnesses association operated legally, though the communist authorities already tried to limit their functioning through administrative decisions. Those actions made Jehovah’s Witnesses aware that their short-lived legal operation might come to an abrupt end. And in the mid-1950 — it did.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have been active in Greater Poland for over a hundred years. Each sub-period of the last century was full of events affecting both the whole community and its individual members. The second part of the article presents the history of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Greater Poland during the years of the Polish People’s Republic (1950–1989): in the period of illegal operation and Stalinist persecution in the years 1950–1956, underground operation in the 1960s and 1970s, and in their pursuit of legalization in the 1980s. The article also discusses Jehovah’s Witnesses in independent Poland, when their operation was again legal, i.e. from 1989 until now. All these periods in the history of Jehovah’s Witnesses are intertwined and affect how they are now perceived in Greater Poland in the Third Polish Republic. Keywords: religious minorities, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Third Polish Republic, Polish People’s Republic, ban, National Committee, Charles Taze Russell, Bible Students, Free Bible Students, Epiphany, Office for Denominational Affairs, Security Office, Security Service, district servant, assembly servant, Watchtower.