The Sarmatian Review Index

January 2003

Volume XXIII, No. 1

9/11

Percentage of Catholics among the rescuers (firemen/women and policemen/women) who lost their lives in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001: 85-90 percent.

Source: Several top officials at the NYPD and FDNY, as reported by Catalyst: Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, vol. 29/4 (September 2002), 1.

Pedophilia

Number of Catholic priests in the United States in 2002: 46,000. Number of Catholic priests accused of sexual misconduct and removed from priesthood in 2002: approximately 200, or 0.4 percent.

Source: Catalyst: Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, no. 29/4 (September 2002), 5.

Corresponding figures for the world: 400,000 priests, approximately 300 documented cases of pedophilia, or 0.075 percent.

Source: Pope John Paul II in a sermon delivered on Holy Thursday at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, as reported by AFP (Warsaw), 28 March 2002; BBC News, 15 April 2002.

Chechen killings

Estimated number of Chechens killed by Russian troops daily: from 30 to 50 persons.

Source: Groznyi University professor to Radoslaw Januszewski, as reported by Radoslaw Januszewski, "Zycie w piwnicy," Rzeczpospolita (www.rzeczpospolita.pl), 22-23 June 2002.

Age range at which any Chechen male can presently "disappear without a trace at any moment": between 12 and 60 years of age.

Source: Anne Nivat, "The Forgotten Chechens," The Prague Post Online (www.praguepost.com/P02/2002/20828/opin1.php), 2 September 2002.

Polish economics

Percentage of GDP generated by the private sector in 2001: 70 percent.

Percentage of labor force employed by the private sector in 2001: 72 percent.

Source: OECD, as reported by AFP, 12 July 2002.

Wealth of nations

Russian foreign debt as of 1 April 2002: 128.3 billion dollars.

Percentage of Russia's government revenues generated by foreign sales of oil and gas: 40 percent.

Source: Henry Meyer, "Russia slashes budget," AFP, 7 August 2002.

Polish population

The annual average birthrate in Poland between 1988-2002: 0.08 percent.

Source: Tadeusz Toczynski, President of the Statistical Institute GUS (Glówny Urzad Statystyczny), as reported by AFP (Warsaw), 25 November 2002.

Foreign investment in Russia

Percentage decline of foreign direct investment in Russia in the first half of 2002: 25.4 percent.

Dollar value of foreign direct investment in Russia in the first half of 2002: 1.9 billion dollars.

Total volume of foreign direct investment in Russia and China: 8.4 billion and 29.5 billion dollars, respectively.

Source: State Statistics Committee, as reported by AFP (Moscow), 13 August 2002.

Horsemanship

Amount of money the wife of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts paid for a horse named Elfina at an annual auction in Janów Podlaski, Poland: 120,000 dollars.

Amount of money an unnamed Saudi buyer paid for a horse named Rose of the Winds: 220,000 dollars.

Number of horses for sale at the 2002 auction: 30.

Source: Polish Press Agency PAP, as reported by AFP (Warsaw), 11 August 2002.

Tourism

Amount of money the Czech Republic gained from tourism in 2001: 3.1 billion dollars, or some 5.5 percent of the country's GDP.

Source: AFP (Prague), 18 August 2002.

Beatifications

Names and achievements of Poles beatified by Pope John Paul II on 18 August 2002 at the Blonie Park Mass in Kraków, Poland (attendance: 2.2 million): Rev. Jan Balicki (+1948), who during the Second World War worked for the poor and needy in the Soviet-occupied part of Poland; archbishop Zygmunt Felinski (1822-95), the founder of the Franciscan order in Petersburg, Russia, who protested the desecration of Catholic churches by the Russian army in Warsaw after the failed rising of 1863, and was exiled by Tsar Alexander II to the outskirts of the empire; Jesuit priest Jan Beyzym (+1912) who spent his life caring for lepers in Madagascar; Sister Sancja Szymkowiak (+1942) who cared for French and British prisoners of war in Nazi-occupied Poland and died in that service.

Source: AFP (Vatican city), 12 August 2002; Texas Catholic Herald, vol. 39, no. 7 (August 23, 2002); Encyklopedia Polski (Kluszczynski Publishers, 1996).

Importance of Pope John Paul II for contemporary Poles

Percentage of Poles who said that Pope John Paul II's visit to Poland in August 2002 was the most important thing in their lives: 86 percent.

Source: Poll results, as reported by AFP, 18 August 2002.

Die vertriebene (the expelled ones)

Percentage of Poles living today (2002) who are descendants of people expelled and dispossessed of their homes during or after the Second World War: 66 percent.

Source: Teresa Bochwic, "Polubic rodaków," Rzeczpospolita (Plus-Minus), 3 August 2002 (www.rzeczpospolita.pl).

OECD Program for International Student Assessment

Year for which most recent data are available: 2000.

Number of students and countries participating in 2000: 265,000 and 32.

Rankings of Poland and the Russian Federation in reading literacy: 24 and 28 (out of 32).

Countries that ranked highest in reading literacy: Finland, South Korea, Canada (in that order).

Ranking of Poland and the Russian Federation in making sense out of a text (students were shown a diagram of a country's working-age population, and description of the labor force status of individual workers; they had to assign each worker to a category of the diagram --the information was available in footnotes ): 25 and 28.

Ranking of Poland and the Russian Federation in critical thinking and evaluation of texts: 19 and 28.

Ranking of Poland and the Russian Federation in mathematical literacy: 28 and 24, respectively.

Countries ranking highest in mathematical literacy: Japan, South Korea, New Zealand.

Ranking of Poland and the Russian Federation on scientific literacy: 21 and 26, respectively.

Countries ranking highest in scientific literacy: South Korea, Japan, Finland.

Source: OECD website (www.pisa.oecd.org), 4 October 2002.

Polish and Jewish demograpics in the United States

Number of Polish Americans according to the 2000 U.S. Census: 9,050,122, a decline of 315,984 from 10 years earlier.

Source: United States Census figures, are reported by APAC (www.apacouncil.org/about.html).

Number of Jewish Americans according to the National Jewish Population Survey released 8 October 2002: 5.2 million, a decline of 300,000 from 10 years earlier.

Percentage of Jewish Americans who were not born in the United States: 15 percent.

Cost of survey: 6 million dollars.

Source: National Jewish Population Survey, as reported by Daniel J. Wakin, New York Times, 9 October 2002.

AIDS in Poland

Number of people in Poland registered as HIV positive: 7,733.

Estimated total number of HIV-positive persons in Poland (pop. 38.3 million): 15,000 to 20,000.

Status of AIDS in Poland: contained.

Worries of AIDS specialists in Poland: the explosion of HIV infections in Poland's eastern neighbors Russia and Ukraine.

Estimated number of people in Russia and Ukraine infected with HIV virus: one million and 500,000, respectively.

Source: Anna Marzec-Boguslawska, Director of AIDS Prevention Office in Poland, as reported by AFP, 10 October 2002.