Famous people who grew up or lived in Poland
10 notable people grew up or lived in Poland. Each listing explores the home and neighbourhood, and how the place shaped the person they became.
David Ben-Gurion1886–1973
📍 Plonsk, Masovian, Poland
I was born David Grün on the 16th of October 1886 in Płońsk, a small town in the Russian-controlled Pale of Settlement in what is now Poland. I went to Palestine at the age of twenty…
Frédéric Chopin1810–1831
📍 Szkolna 1, 96-503 Żelazowa Wola, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland
I was born on the 1st of March 1810 in Żelazowa Wola, a village in the Mazovian plains west of Warsaw, the son of Nicolas Chopin, a French émigré teacher, and Justyna Krzyżanowska. The…
Irena Sendler1935–1943
📍 6 Ludwiki Street, Czyste district, Warsaw 01-226, Poland
I was born in Warsaw in 1910 and I lived there through the German occupation, working as a social worker with access to the Warsaw Ghetto. Between 1942 and 1943 I organised a network that…
Lech Wałęsa1943–1990
📍 Gdansk, Pomerania, Poland
Lech Wałęsa was born in September 1943 in Popowo, a village in German-occupied Poland, the son of a carpenter. He trained as an electrician and in 1967 began working at the Lenin Shipyard…
Marie Curie1867–1891
📍 Freta Street 16, 00-227 Warsaw, Poland
I was born Manya Sklodowska in Warsaw on the seventh of November 1867, fifth child of two schoolteachers. Russia occupied Poland, and science was dangerous — the authorities suppressed…
Maximilian Kolbe1894–1941
📍 Auschwitz-Birkenau, Oswiecim, Poland
I was a Polish Franciscan friar who had established a community at Niepokalanów near Warsaw and built it into one of the largest Catholic monasteries in the world, with its own radio…
Nicolaus Copernicus1473–1483
📍 ul. Kopernika 15/17, 87-100 Toruń, Poland
I was born in 1473 in this tall Gothic brick house on what was then St Anne's Street in Toruń, a thriving Hanseatic trading city on the Vistula. It was a granary house, as the merchants…
Oskar Schindler1939–1945
📍 Schindler Factory, Lipowa 4, Kraków, Poland
I was a German industrialist and member of the Nazi party who came to Kraków in 1939 to make his fortune from the war, and who left it in 1945 having spent that fortune saving the lives of…
Pope John Paul II1920–1938
📍 ul. Kościelna 7, 34-100 Wadowice, Poland
I was Karol Wojtyła, born in May 1920 in a small first-floor apartment of two rooms and a kitchen at 7 Kościelna Street in Wadowice, beside the parish church; from our window I could see…
Robert Lewandowski1988–2006
📍 Leszno, Warsaw West County, Poland
Robert Lewandowski was born in Warsaw in August 1988 and grew up in Leszno, a village in the countryside west of the city. His father, Krzysztof, was a judo champion and footballer who…