FAMILY HISTORY: Reminder of a love story.

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My sister Phyllis found it about six months ago -- a creased, crumbling yellowed page covered with smeared ink handwriting. Each side had what looked like a cross, the stained remains of glue from rotted scotch tape. Unfolding it risked destroying the pages completely. The back bore what looked like an official government stamp in faded purple. We recognized the words as Polish, but had no idea what they meant.  Still, three things jumped off the page: the year 1888 and two names repeated throughout: Zys and Acierman (or Akierman).

Best statues in NYC's Central Park: Poland's King Jagiello, hero of 1410

Six hundred years ago, this man atop his bronze horse in full battle regalia, pointing his dual sabers to the sky, was the single most powerful on earth. He was Poland's King Wladyslaw Jagiello, and on July 15, 1410, he led an army of 50,000 Polish and Lithuanian knights, cavalry, and foot soldiers against a marauding horde of 32,000 invading Teutons -- primarily Germans -- near the small town of Grunwald.

By sundown, Jagiello's soldiers had slaughtered over 26,000 of the invaders, utterly demolishing their army. The Battle of Grunwald, as it came to be called, would reshape Central Europe for the next 300 years, placing King Jagiello in command of a vast, united Polish-Lithuanian empire that included large swaths of modern Germany and Russia. It was also one of the most civilized places in Medieval Europe, complete with bicameral legislature, checks on royal power, religious tolerance (this is when Jewish people came to escape persecution further west), and a home to Renaissance art. Jagiello's vistory was one of two game-changing military events of the Fifteenth Century, the other being England's 1419 triumph over France at Agincourt, immortalized by William Shakespeare in his play Henry V. (Click here to see Kenneth Branagh delivering Henry's terrific speech to his troops.)

Personally, I had never heard of King Jagiella (damn American education system!!) until last week when I happened to come across this fantastic statue of him in New York City's Central Park. The work of Polish sculpter Stanislaw Ostrowski, it served originally as centerpiece for Poland's exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair. But the outbreak of World War II, in which Poland was quickly devoured by Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, left it stranded in America. New York Mayor Fiorello Laguardia fell in love it and lobbied to keep it in New York City. In 1945, the Polish government-in-exile agreed, and it was moved to its current spot in Central Park.

Next time you're in the neighborhood, don't miss it. It's at the east end of Turtle Pond, near the Great Lawn, not far from Cleopatra's Needle, and an easy walk from the Upper East Side.

FAMILY HISTORY: The Forger - Our family's secret savior?

I don't have a photo of Joseph Rubinsky, but here's something better: a sample of his work. What you see is a 1926 American entrance visa, a rare gem at a time when millions of refugees from war-scarred Eastern Europe were still trying to reach the US but were blocked by newly-imposed immigration quotas. This visa was worth a fortune on the black market.

FAMILY HISTORY: Pilsudski

Meet Jozef Pilsudski, the father of modern Poland. He's the other great figure of post-World War I Europe who played a role in bringing my grandparents to the USA. But unlike Leon Trotsky, whom I described in my last post as starting the war that caused them to flee, Pilsudski tried to give them a reason to stay.

FAMILY HISTORY: The Official Slanderer

Looking to find one emblematic villain behind America's decision to slam its doors against immigrant refugees in the early 1920s -- especially Jewish people from Eastern Europe like my grandparents for whom failure to escape would mean death in the Holocaust? Look no further than this man: Brigadier General Marlborough Churchill, head of American Military Intelligence (MID) from 1918 through 1920. During this time, Churchill's MID generated a parade of reports painting Jews as undesirables, subversives, and Reds, as slanted as any Anti-Semitic propaganda of the era.

FAMILY HISTORY: Guardian Angel - The Ostrovsta Rebbe

Meet Meir Yechiel HaLevi, Rabbi of the tiny hamlet of Ostrowiec, Poland, in the early 1900s, known as the Ostrovtsa Rebbe. He lived almost eighty years and became world renowned as a leading Hasidic figure of his time. About four months ago, I learned that this odd, pious, brilliant, often eccentric man had intervened with my grandparents about ninety years ago, back in 1920, and essentially saved our family from the Nazi Holocaust.