WARSAW, Poland — It’s difficult to miss the season at Warsaw’s swank Galerie Mokotow shopping center: Just inside the main entrance stands a bright red kiosk decorated with hearts that sells Valentine’s Day cards, chocolates and candies. Just 20 years ago Valentine’s Day was almost completely unknown in Poland. But in the two decades since the end of communism it has quickly become one of Poland’s favorite imported holidays, and that is in large part due to the work of one woman.

WARSAW, Poland — General Wojciech Jaruzelski may be ill and 86 but he continues to divide his country over his 1981 decision to crush the Solidarity labor union with force, saying he was acting to prevent a possible Soviet invasion. The latest blow-up over the general’s past came last week following the broadcast of a documentary called “Comrade General,” which took a hard and unfavorable look at Jaruzelski’s Communist past.

WARSAW, Poland — Tomasz Nalecz wants to become president of Poland, so he turned for help to someone who has already won a presidential election — Barack Obama. Obama's assistance came not literally but figuratively — or more accurately, photographically. Nalecz, a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party, put up billboards with his photo in front of Poland's presidential palace on one side of the ad, and a grinning Obama in front of the U.S. Capitol on the other.

WARSAW, Poland — For most of the world, 2009 was a year best forgotten, but in Poland it was a year of enormous success, leaving the country the only member of the European Union not to fall into a recession during the global economic crisis.