Poland (edition 4) Poland_edition4 | Page 2

Poland FAMOUS POLISH PEOPLE Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła) He is the most famous Polish person around the world. He was born in a city close to Krakow, and the Polish people are really proud and grateful for the pope. Poland is a very catholic country – 87,6% according to our buddy Wikipedia – so it’s natural that they feel very proud of having a Polish pope. Besides being a religious leader, the pope also had political influence, and used it in order to help put- ting an end to the communism era in Poland. In Krakow, there is a place called Bishop’s Palace (Pałac Biskupi) where the pope used to stay while visiting the city. In this building there is a window from where the pope used to bless and talk to his followers. Nowa- days, this window has a picture of the pope in his honor. Nicolaus Copernicus (Mikołaj Kopernik) Roman Polański Polański is a famous Polish film director, and Oscar winner due to his direction in the movie The Pianist. Even though he was born in Paris, his fam- ily has Polish and Jew- ish roots, and in 1937 they moved back to Poland, when Polanski was only 4 years old. Polański has Polish citi- zenship. Copernicus was a math- ematician and astronomer that proposed a heliocen- tric model of the universe, i.e. a model where the Sun would be the center of the universe, not the Earth as it was imagined by then. He was born in the city of Toruń, in Poland. In Warsaw there is even a museum with his name – Copernicus Science Centre (Centrum Nauki Kopernik). Robert Lewandowski Football fans – or soccer fans for the Americans – for sure already knew that Lewandowski is Polish. He is Poland’s greatest football idol, and also the greatest striker of Polish na- tional team’s history. Football is a good form of connection between different nations, that’s why whenever I tell someone that I live in Poland, they say: Lewandowski! He is indeed the most famous Polish football player out there.