Description

This unusual newspaper with highly decorative art-deco illustrations on the cover, showcasing young men fighting in the war and studying, was printed in December 1943 in Tel Aviv. It includes articles on the Polish youth, theatre, arts in Palestine and education system left behind in Poland, when the country was invaded by the Germans. The drawings of the teachers on the back were made by Tadeusz Wojnarski (1922-2008), who after WWII settled in Zürich, where he worked as art teacher.

According to the imprint on the back, the newspaper was issued as an appendix to the periodical Junak: miesięcznik dla mł. ochotniczek i junaków na Śr. Wschodzie (Hero: Monthly for Young Volunteers and Youths at the Middle East), and is numbered as issue 1.

The Polish II Corps (Drugi Korpus Wojska Polskiego) was formed in 1943, from various units fighting alongside the Allies in all theatres of war, one of them being located in British-held Iraq. The corps consisted not only of Polish soldiers, but also of Jews, Belorussian and Ukrainians. Many Polish soldiers were imprisoned in Gulags by the Soviets from 1939 on and were released in 1941, after the Polish-Russian Military Agreement on 14 August, which allowed for the creation of a Polish Army on Soviet soil.

The Polish II Corps played a major role in the North African and the Italian Campaigns (1941–1945) as part of the British Eighth Army. After the war the division was was housed at various locations in England, where they maintained a presence until 1962.