ABSTRACT
This Introduction describes Poland's geography, population, economy, and international relations, as well as the political, administrative, and legal system. Based on current data from Statistics Poland and from Urban Audit, information about the country's settlement and the degree of urbanization is presented. The authors thereafter sketch the most important stages of Polish history: the partitions (1772–1918), WWI, WWII, post-war repercussions, and the post-1989 transformation into a democratic state. Before WWII, Polish lands were noted for the variety of their ethnic and religious communities. However, the war drastically changed this, as Poland's historically strong Jewish population was almost wholly annihilated in the Holocaust. Millions of non-Jewish Poles were also killed, victims of more partition and conquest. Cemeteries offer testimony to the multiculturalism of prewar Poland.
