JANUARY 28 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

JANUARY 28

1573

Articles of Warsaw Confederation were signed, ushering in freedom of religion in Poland. It was an important development in the history of Poland and Lithuania that extended religious tolerance to nobility and free persons within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and is considered the formal beginning of religious freedom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. While it did not prevent all conflict based on religion, it did make the Commonwealth a much safer and more tolerant place than most of contemporaneous Europe, especially during the subsequent Thirty Years' War.

1937

Anti-Semitic riots at University of Warsaw and Warsaw University of Technology.

1944

Message from Churchill to Roosevelt:  " London, 28 January 1944  no. 557  "  After much thought and talk I have sent the following signal to U. J. (U.J. referred to Uncle Joe, nickname for Stalin)  (1) ....... I saw representatives of the Polish Government in London...(and)....informed them that the security of the Russian frontiers against Germany was a matter of high consequence...... and that we should certainly support the Soviet Union in all measures we considered necessary......  I said that although we had gone to war for the sake of Poland, we had not gone to war for any particular frontier line but for the existence of a strong free, independent Poland, which Marshal Stalin had also declared himself supporting. ....... (T)he liberation of Poland....is being achieved... by the enormous sacrifices and achievements of the Russian armies. Therefore Russia and her Allies had a right to ask that Poland should be guided....about the frontiers of the territory she would have.  (2) ........ I made it clear that the Polish Government would not be committed to the acceptance of the Curzon line as a basis of examination except as part of the arrangement which gave them the fine compensations to the North (East Prussia) and to the West (Oder Line) which I had mentioned.  (4) The Polish ministers were very far from rejecting the prospects...... but...they have asked a number of questions...... in particular they wish to be assured that Poland would be free and independent.....that she would receive the guarantee of the Great Powers against German revenge effectively..... that these Great Powers would also assist in expelling the Germans from the new territories to be assigned to Poland.... that in regions to be incorporated in Soviet Russia such Poles....would be assisted to depart from their new abodes......what (would) their position... be if a large part of Poland West of the Curzon line is soon occupied by the advancing Soviet armies.... Will they be allowed to go back and form a more broad based government in accordance with the popular wish and allowed to function administratively in the liberated areas in the same way as other governments who have been overrun? ......they are.....deeply concerned about relations between the Polish underground movement and the advancing Soviet forces,..... (7)........the Soviet Russia has the right to recognize or refuse recognition to any foreign government, (but) do you not agree that to advocate changes within a foreign government comes near to that interference with internal sovereignty to which you and I have expressed ourselves as opposed? .........(8). I now report this conversation which expresses the policy of His Majesty’s Government....to my friend and comrade, Marshal Stalin.........a good relationship will be absolutely necessary between .....Poland and the Soviet Union. The creation in Warsaw of another Polish government different from the one we have recognized up to the present, together with disturbances in Poland, would raise issues in Great Britain and the United States detrimental to that close accord between the Three Great Powers upon which the future of the world depends..... "

2006

Katowice Trade Hall roof collapsed at Chorzów, 65 killed. At 16:15 GMT (17:15 local time), the central section of the roof of the hall collapsed, possibly due to the weight of snow on the building. According to the police there were roughly 700 people in the hall at the time of the collapse. A further collapse occurred 90 minutes later during rescue operations. Polish government spokesman Krzysztof Mejer confirmed that there had been 65 dead as well as more than 170 injured, including 13 foreigners. There are confirmed deaths of ten foreign tourists – one from Belgium, one from Germany, three from Slovakia, one from the Netherlands, one from Hungary and three from the Czech Republic. . Poland was at that time experiencing very cold weather with heavy snow. This meant that the rescue operation was undertaken in sub-zero temperatures, putting the survivors inside the building at risk of exposure.