Oskar Halecki was a Polish historian, social and Catholic activist.
15 Facts About Oskar Halecki
2.
Oskar Halecki secured his first teaching position in 1915 as a docent at his alma mater, the Jagiellonian University.
3.
Oskar Halecki was disqualified from military service due to poor eyesight.
4.
Oskar Halecki moved to the Warsaw University in 1918, where he was appointed to a chair of East European history.
5.
Oskar Halecki then spent a year in Paris as Chief of the University Section in the league's Institute on Intellectual Co-operation and then spent several years working on its various commissions.
6.
Oskar Halecki was attending a conference in Fribourg when Germany invaded Poland, which triggered the Second World War.
7.
When Germany invaded France in 1940, Oskar Halecki escaped to the United States with the help of Stephen Mizwa and the Kosciuszko Foundation, where he spent two years as a visiting professor of history at Vassar College before he became executive director of the new Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, which was conceived as an American outpost of the Polska Akademia Umiejetnosci.
8.
Oskar Halecki became a professor of Eastern European history at Fordham University from 1944 to 1961, and he was affiliated with the University of Montreal from 1944 to 1951 and an adjunct professor at Columbia University from 1955 to 1961, where he contributed to the prestige of Columbia's Institute on East Central Europe.
9.
Oskar Halecki's work led to the gradual acceptance of the concept and name of East Central Europe.
10.
Oskar Halecki served on the controversial "Committee of Ten" in Scarsdale, New York, which claimed communist influence in the public school curriculum in the 1950s.
11.
Oskar Halecki was married to Helen de Sulima-Szarlowska, who died in 1964.
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Oskar Halecki received honorary doctorates from the University of Lyon, the University of Montreal, De Paul University, Fordham University, and Saint Peter's College.
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Oskar Halecki was Papal Chamberlain and Knight of the Grand Cross, Order of Malta; Commander of the Order of Polonia Restituta; Commander of Saint Gregory; Commander, Hungarian Croix de Merite; and Chevalier, Legion d'honneur.
14.
Oskar Halecki received the Polish American Historical Association's first Haiman Award for outstanding contributions to Polish American studies.
15.
In 1981, the Polish American Historical Association established the Oskar Halecki Prize, given to recognize an important book or monograph on the Polish experience in the United States.