Order of the White Eagle for Janusz Korczak and Baruch Steinberg.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie, Władysław Reymont, Ignacy Daszyński, Roman Dmowski, Janusz Korczak and Baruch Steinberg are posthumously awarded the highest Polish state order. On the hundredth anniversary of regaining Poland’s independence, President Andrzej Duda honored 25 eminent Poles „meritorious for the glory, good and benefit of the Republic of Poland”.
– Sometimes it was strange to see that someone so great and so famous to be awarded the Order of the White Eagle has not got it so far. I am glad that Poland can make up for it by stressing the extraordinary role played by a given person in Polish public life, in Polish scientific life and in Polish cultural life or in simply building Polish society, or in building the Polish state, or simply for the glorification of Poland in the world because people from very different disciplines have received the Order of the White Eagle. From very different backgrounds, from very different national groups of this great Republic of Many Nations as it was during this century. But they were all Poles and I have no doubt that these are orders granted to the Poles because they certainly felt so, because each of them, looking at their lives, looking into their merits for Poland and for the world very often were certainly Polish patriots – said in his speech the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda.
Among the posthumously honoured with the Order of the White Eagle are two eminent and distinguished representatives of the Jewish community for the fatherland, the Republic of Poland.
Janusz KORCZAK born in Warsaw, in an assimilated Jewish family. He was a writer, pedagogue, doctor, publicist, social activist and a great advocate of children’s rights. Under the pseudonym, Old Doctor, ran a series of radio programs for the youngest. He died in the extermination camp in Treblinka, in 1942 with children he looked after in the Orphans’ Home.
The Order of the White Eagle was posthumously awarded to: two-time Nobel laureate Maria Skłodowska-Curie; one of the most outstanding mathematicians of the twentieth century Stefan Banach; inventor of the polio virus vaccination Hilary Koprowski; fathers of independence Roman Dmowski and Ignacy Daszyński; activist of the people’s movement, one of the convicts in the process of sixteen, Stanisław Mierzwa; Speaker of the Sejm Maciej Rataj.
Among the awarded are also: the first Polish Olympic medallist Halina Konopacka; commander of the First Independent Parachute Brigade General Stanisław Sosabowski; servant of God, Archbishop Antoni Baraniak; bishop of the Evangelical-Augsburg Church Juliusz Bursche; father priest of the Orthodox church Szymon Fedoronko.
The Order of the White Eagle was received by the activist of the Tartar community, Leon Kryczyński; painter Wojciech Kossak; writer Zofia Kossak-Szczucka; the creators of the Polish scouting movement Olga Drahonowska-Małkowska and Andrzej Małkowski; Prime Minister of the Second Polish Republic Jędrzej Moraczewski; philosopher and jurist Leon Petrazycki; writer Kornel Makuszyński; composer Karol Szymanowski; writer, Nobel laureate Władysław Reymont and writer Stefan Żeromski.