Poland's always been exceptionally altruistic, heroic, and humane by European standards.
First Pagan rights & co existing concept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paweł_Włodkowic
As early as the beginning of the 15th century, along with Stanisław of Skarbimierz, Włodkowic strongly supported the idea of conciliarism and pioneered the notion of peaceful coexistence among nations – a forerunner of modern theories of human rights. Throughout his political, diplomatic and university career, Paweł Włodkowic expressed the view that a world guided by the principles of peace and mutual respect among nations was possible and that pagan nations had a right to peace and to possession of their own lands. F
First concept of Just War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisław_of_Skarbimierz
Stanisław of Skarbimierz, along with Paweł Włodkowic, framed the Polish position, at the Council of Constance, pioneering ideas of modern human rights and international law. Stanisław's sermons "About Just War" (De bellis justis) and "About robbery" (De rapina) gave fundaments to medieval theory of just war. The sermons justified position of Kingdom of Poland toward a war with Teutonic Knights. Stanisław died at Kraków.[
First concept of leaders being accountable to the law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wawrzyniec_Grzymała_Goślicki
In this book Goślicki shows the ideal statesman who is well versed in the humanities as well as in economy, politics, and law. He argued that law is above the ruler, who must respect it, and that it is illegitimate to rule over a people against its will. He equated godliness with reason, and reason with law.[1] Many of the book's ideas comprised the foundations of Polish Nobles' Democracy (1505–1795) and were based on 14th-century writings by Stanisław of Skarbimierz. The book was not translated into Polish for 400 years.[1]
Unprecedented rights for Jews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Kalisz
The General Charter of Jewish Liberties known as the Statute of Kalisz, and as the Kalisz Privilege, was issued by the Duke of Greater Poland Boleslaus the Pious on September 8, 1264 in Kalisz.
The statute granted Jews unprecedented legal rights in Europe, including exclusive jurisdiction over Jewish matters to Jewish courts, and established a separate tribunal for other criminal matters involving Christians and Jews. The statute was ratified by subsequent Polish Kings: Casimir III in 1334, Casimir IV in 1453, and Sigismund I in 1539.
First modern Freedom of Religion movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Confederation
e Warsaw Confederation, signed on 28 January 1573 by the Polish national assembly (sejm konwokacyjny) in Warsaw, was one of the first European acts granting religious freedoms. It was an important development in the history of Poland and of Lithuania that extended religious tolerance to nobility and free persons within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth[1] and is considered the formal beginning of religious freedom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Although 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.[2]
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Religious tolerance in Poland had had a long tradition (e.g. Statute of Kalisz) and had been de facto policy in the reign of the recently deceased King Sigismund II. However, the articles signed by the Confederation gave official sanction to earlier custom. In that sense, they may be considered either the beginning or the peak of Polish tolerance.
Following the childless death of the last king of the Jagiellonian dynasty, Polish and Lithuanian nobles (szlachta) gathered at Warsaw to prevent any separatists from acting and to maintain the existing legal order. For that the citizens had to unconditionally abide the decisions made by the body; and the confederation was a potent declaration that the two former states are still closely linked.
In January the nobles signed a document in which representatives of all the major religions pledged each other mutual support and tolerance. A new political system was arising, aided by the confederation which contributed to its stability. Religious tolerance was an important factor in a multiethnic and multi-religious state, as the territories of the Commonwealth were inhabited by many generations of people from different ethnic backgrounds (Poles, Lithuanians, Ruthenian, Germans and Jews) and of different denominations (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish and even Muslim). "This country became what Cardinal Hozjusz called “a place of shelter for heretics”. It was a place where the most radical religious sects, trying to escape persecution in other countries of the Christian world, sought refuge.[3]
First European Enlightened Constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_3_May_1791
The Constitution of 3 May 1791[1][2] (Polish: Ustawa Rządowa, "Governance Act"), was a constitution adopted by the Great Sejm ("Four-Year Sejm", meeting in 1788–92) for the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a dual monarchy comprising the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Constitution was designed to correct the Commonwealth's political flaws and had been preceded by a period of agitation for—and gradual introduction of—reforms, beginning with the Convocation Sejm of 1764 and the consequent election that year of Stanisław August Poniatowski as the Commonwealth's last king.
The Constitution sought to implement a more effective constitutional monarchy, introduced political equality between townspeople and nobility, and placed the peasants under the protection of the government, mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom. It banned pernicious parliamentary institutions such as the liberum veto, which had put the Sejm at the mercy of any single deputy, who could veto and thus undo all the legislation that had been adopted by that Sejm. The Commonwealth's neighbours reacted with hostility to the adoption of the Constitution. King Frederick William II broke Prussia's alliance with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and joined with Catherine the Great's Imperial Russia and the Targowica Confederation of anti-reform Polish magnates to defeat the Commonwealth in the Polish–Russian War of 1792.
The 1791 Constitution was in force for less than 19 months.[3][4] It was declared null and void by the Grodno Sejm that met in 1793,[1][4] though the Sejm's legal power to do so was questionable.[4] The Second and Third Partitions of Poland (1793, 1795) ultimately ended Poland's sovereign existence until the close of World War I in 1918. Over that 123-year period, the 1791 Constitution helped keep alive Polish aspirations for the eventual restoration of the country's sovereignty. In the words of two of its principal authors, Ignacy Potocki and Hugo Kołłątaj, the 1791 Constitution was "the last will and testament of the expiring Homeland."[a]
Poles saved the ONLY remaining original European forest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Białowieża_Forest
The entire area of northeastern Europe was originally covered by ancient woodland similar to that of the Białowieża Forest. Until about the 14th century, travel through the woodland was limited to river routes; roads and bridges appeared much later. Limited hunting rights were granted throughout the forest in the 14th century. In the 15th century the forest became a property of king Władysław II Jagiełło. A wooden manor in Białowieża became his refuge during a plague pandemic in 1426.[citation needed] The first recorded piece of legislation on the protection of the forest dates to 1538, when a document issued by Sigismund I instituted the death penalty for poaching a bison.[16] The King also built a new wooden hunting manor in a village of Białowieża, which became the namesake for the whole complex. Since Białowieża means the "white tower", the corresponding Puszcza Białowieska translates as the "forest of the white tower". The Tower of Kamyenyets on the Belarusian side, built of red brick, is also referred to as the White Tower (Belaya Vezha) even though it was never white, perhaps taking the name from the pushcha.[17]
The forest was declared a hunting reserve in 1541 to protect bison. In 1557, the forest charter was issued, under which a special board was established to examine forest usage. In 1639, King Vladislaus IV issued the "Białowieża royal forest decree" (Ordynacja Puszczy J.K. Mości leśnictwa Białowieskiego). The document freed all peasants living in the forest in exchange for their service as osocznicy, or royal foresters. They were also freed of taxes in exchange for taking care of the forest. The forest was divided onto 12 triangular areas (straże) with a centre in Białowieża.
Poles Saved the European Bison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_bison
European bison survived in a few natural forests in Europe, but their numbers dwindled. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, European bison in the Białowieża Forest were legally the property of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania until the third partition of Poland. Wild European bison herds also existed in the forest until the mid-17th century. Polish kings took measures to protect the bison. King Sigismund II Augustus instituted the death penalty for poaching a European bison in Białowieża in the mid-16th century. In the early 19th century, after the partitions of the Polish Commonwealth the Russian tsars retained old Lithuanian laws protecting the European bison herd in Białowieża. Despite these measures and others, the European bison population continued to decline over the following century, with only Białowieża and Northern Caucasus populations surviving into the 20th century.[38][39] The last European bison in Transylvania died in 1790.[40]
Highest Righteous Among the Nations in Europe dedicated to saving Holocaust victim Jews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Righteous_Among_the_Nations
Poles warned the World about the Holocaust.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karski's_reports
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilecki's_Report
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raczyński's_Note
First ever ministry of education by Poland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Poland
Polish Ministry of Education established by King Stanisław August Poniatowski in 1773 was the first ministry of education in the world,[
Saved the Irish in the Potato famine.
https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/paul-strzelecki-irish-famine
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Polish explorer who saved over 200,000 during Irish Famine remembered in new exhibit
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/contrarian/belgiums-heart-darkness
Polish writer Jozef Conrad brought the Belgian Congo genocide to the World's attention.
The most famous account of Leopold’s Congo is Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness (1899). With its grisly, bloody imagery, one might imagine that Conrad exaggerated the awfulness of the regime
Polish Jew Raphael Lemkin formulated modern genocide terms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Lemkin
Raphael Lemkin (Polish: Rafał Lemkin; 24 June 1900 – 28 August 1959) was a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent who is best known for coining the word genocide and initiating the Genocide Convention. Lemkin coined the word genocide in 1943 or 1944 from genos (Greek for family, tribe, or race) and -cide (Latin for killing).[1][2][3][4]
Polish philosophers like Andrzej Wiszowaty,Stanisław Staszic,Cieszkowski, Abramowski.
https://culture.pl/en/article/10-polish-philosophers-who-changed-the-way-we-think
In the end, Wiszowaty claimed that the most important meaning of the Bible lies in its ethical teaching, which concentrated on human dignity. This led the Brethren to create a radically egalitarian society – for example, they believed that a husband and wife should form a partnership in which there would be no domination. They also openly opposed the pervasive serfdom system of their day, with many of them liberating their peasants and living with them on equal terms.
He discovered that history was ruled by unchanging laws and mechanisms and that at its centre was human reason, which ruled over human tendency towards egoism and conflicts and inclined them to create an order of truth in the form of co-operating groups. He considered constitutional monarchy to be the greatest embodiment of this order and believed that human history will ultimately lead to the establishment of a specific goal – a world order in the form of an association of nations that would be called… the European Union!
Cieszkowski’s influence is enormous. Without the Polish philosopher, Karl Marx would not have developed his idea of alienation and would not have called for action and consciousness to unite in revolutionary praxis. Cieszkowski is also often considered the creator of the philosophy of action and his work largely shaped not only Polish but also Russian philosophy – Alexander Herzen openly admitted that he borrowed numerous ideas from the Polish thinker.
His life and work was predominantly guided by his idea of a ‘co-operative republic’ – in his view, the state should only defend its citizens from external enemies and guarantee their right to form associations and co-operatives that should be in charge of the economy, education, the social order and other public interests.
This idea, however, was not libertarian, as Abramowski valued the social dimension of human life much more highly than any notions of personal autonomy. Additionally, he believed that all people were psychologically inclined towards solidarity and brotherhood and this inclination should help them in carrying out a ‘moral revolution’ based on a Abramowski’s idea of a Kantian free person structuring their life in accordance with an ethical ideal. To put it most accurately, his proposal was unmistakably socialist, but contrary to many socialist thinkers he believed that real change cannot be enforced by political decisions,
Polish equality & rights Philosopher Modzrewski.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrzej_Frycz_Modrzewski
He supported Irenicism (the importance of unity) and the democratic and ecumenical element in the Church. He became an official at the court of Sigismund II Augustus in 1547. Since he was leaning strongly towards the reformist circles (especially Calvinian and Arian/Polish brethren), he became in danger of being accused of heresy and was ultimately stripped of his ecclesiastical titles and offices. The king, however, issued a letter of protection for him. In 1553 he retired to his native Wolbórz.
Modrzewski debuted as a writer in 1543 with the work called Lascius, sive de poena homicidii (On The Penalty for Manslaughter; or Łaski, czyli O karze za mężobójstwo in Polish). In it, Modrzewski criticized the inequality prescribed by the law for different social classes: for example, while the penalty for killing a nobleman ranged from 120 grzywna – through life imprisonment – to death, the penalty for killing a peasant was only 10 grzywna.[1] Yet it was On the Improvement of the Commonwealth (De Republica emendanda) that brought him eternal and international fame. In it, he advocated a strong monarchy that would protect the rights of all citizens. He postulated equality of all before the law, and criticized the 1565 ban on land-owning by non-nobles.
