Actually, Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of the New World and the godfather of American Indians (Native Americans), never set foot on the territory of the contemporary United States. However, since 1937, Americans have been celebrating the federal holiday named Columbus Day. From the 1960s, commemoration of October 12 has been subject to gradually increasing criticism by ancestors of Native Americans. On the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the New World the counterproposal was presented to commemorate this day as the Indigenous Peoples’ Day. In the 21st century, Columbus has become for many the symbol of extermination performed by white colonizers in the New World during the Age of Discovery. His monuments were stained with red paint as a symbol of blood shed by colonizers. According to some opinion poll from 2017, the US society is divided almost in half on which of these two holidays should be commemorated. The purpose of this paper is to present the changes regarding the image of Columbus and the history of colonialism by comparing scientific and educational perspectives in Italy and Poland in the 21st century.

Some features of economic development of village in the Eastern Galicia in 20–30 years of the 20th century

The article deals with the agrarian policy of the Polish government of the interwar period, which was intended to reform the agricultural system to increase productivity of agricultural production, the development of commodity-money relations and the activation of cooperative movement. The governmental policy has led to the formation of a land market, creating conditions for the origin of independent farms of different types and sizes, which were based on a private property of land. The main component of the agricultural policy of the government was colonization, which was intended to strengthen the eastern borders of the Second Polish Republic by creating economies of the colonists. They have become a social and political support for the government on the “Eastern lands.” This state policy influenced hostilely on millions of the local Ukrainian population. In despite the understanding of a significant number of Polish politicians and scientists such activities harm to the interests of the state, during the interwar period colonization of the land remained the main direction of agricultural policy. The Polish government has openly ignored the problems of the Ukrainian village, which led to a tangle of economic, national and social troubles that impacted on the Polish-Ukrainian aggravation of interethnic relations.

German state children (Staatskinder) of the Evangelical denomination in the colonisation of the eastern provinces of the Prussian state. The orphanage in Ruchocin/Mielżyn 1899– –1918

The article presents the mechanism of the Prussian authorities using „state children” [Staatskinder] in the process of colonization of the eastern Prussian provinces, and combining charity activity with the program of Germanization of the area in question. The actions taken by the Prussian authorities in the late 19 and the early 20th century were in reaction to the internal migration movements, which directly affected the eastern Prussian provinces, from Berlins perspective negatively influencing their national structure. In 1895, Ernst Hasse presented a plan to colonize the eastern Prussian provinces by bringing „state children”, i.e. orphans and illegitimate children from the metropolitan areas of central and western Germany, and placing them in orphanages established in the East. The article describes, among others, one of such orphanages which operated between 1899 and 1918 and was supervised by the Protestant Association for the Care of Orphans in the Province of Poznań [Evangelischer Verein für Waisenpflege in der Provinz Posen].