O prawdziwy wizerunek Tatara w Polsce
True Perception of Tatars in Poland

Summary/Abstract: Tatars in our country are perceived as strangers. This perception finds support in school textbooks, and popular imagination pictures them as threatening and treacherous Tuhay-Beys described by Sienkiewicz in this Trilogy. This image has not changed, even despite their continuous settlements in Poland, beginning in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the second half of the 14th century. Tatars from the eastern flanks of Poland would respond to every call from the Grand Duke of Lithuania, and later, from Polish kings, to defend their adopted homeland. In the interwar years many Tatars, i.e. numerous intelligentsia, including many laywers, strived to change the perception of Polish Tatar. Many Tatars served in the Polish army during Polish independence, and earlier had fought along Poles in the Polish-Soviet War. Central figures in those years were representatives of the Tatar families of Achmatowicze, Kryczyńscy, Romanowicze and Sulkiewicze.

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