NOVEMBER 14
1918
On November 14, 1918, Piłsudski was asked to supervise the provisional government of Poland. Several days later he was officially bestowed the title of Provisional Chief of State of the Second Polish Republic, by the government of Jędrzej Moraczewski. After Poland re-emerged as a nation-state following the end of WWI, Pilsudski was in command of Polish forces in six border wars. In the Polish-Soviet War, Pilsudskis' forces seemed on the verge of defeat, but in August 1920 the Battle of Warsaw, the Poles succeeded in defeating the invading Soviets, to their utter humiliation. In 1923 Pilsudski withdrew from active politics (the Polish government was under control of his opponents, in particular the National Democrats.) Three years later he returned to power in the May 1926 coup d'état and became Poland's supreme leader. Jozef Pilsudski is regarded as the Father of the Second Polish Republic.
1982
Polish Solidarity Chairman Lech Wałęsa was freed on November 14, 1982 after having been imprisoned for 11 months. He and other Solidarity activists were arrested following the crackdown imposed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski. Walesa is the founder of the Solidarity movement (Solidarnosc), and was relentlessly persecuted, surveilled, and arrested several times by the Communist authorities. In August 1980 he was instrumental in political negotiations that led to the ground-breaking Gdańsk Agreement between striking workers and the government. He was also prominent in the establishment of the 1989 Round Table Agreement that led to semi-free parliamentary elections in June 1989 and to a Solidarity-led government. In the Polish general election of 1990, Wałęsa successfully ran for the newly re-established office of President of Poland. He presided over Poland's transition from communism to a post-communist state, but his popularity waned and his role in Polish politics diminished after he narrowly lost the 1995 presidential election. In 1983, Wałęsa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Moreover, he has received more than 30 state decorations and more than 50 awards from 30 countries, including Order of the Bath (UK), Order of Merit (Germany), Legion of Honour (France) and European Human Rights Prize (EU 1989). In 2011, he declined to accept the Lithuanian highest order, citing his displeasure at Lithuania's policy towards the Polish diaspora. In the United States, Wałęsa was the first recipient of the Liberty Medal, in 1989. In the same year, he was also presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and became the first non-head-of-state to address a joint meeting of the United States Congress. Quote from Walesa: "My most ardent desire is that my country will recapture its historic opportunity for a peaceful evolution and that Poland will prove to the world that even the most complex situations can be resolved by a dialogue and not by force."
1990
The German–Polish Border Treaty was signed on November 14, 1990, finally settling the Polish–German border, an issue which was pending since the end of World War II in 1945. The treaty was signed by the foreign ministers of Poland and Germany, Krzysztof Skubiszewski and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in Warsaw, ratified by the Polish Sejm on November 25, 1991 and the German Bundestag on December 16, 1991. Among the terms of the Treaty, Poland and Germany declared that the frontier between them was inviolable now, and hereafter, and mutually pledged to respect their sovereignty and territorial integrity, and a mutual declaration that they have no territorial claims against each other and shall not raise such claims in the future. In the ratification process at the Bundestag, there were 13 dissenting votes by deputies of the CDU/CSU faction, among them Erika Steinbach and Peter Ramsauer.
Steinbach, eh, and still after compensation?
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