The World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace convened in Wrocław, Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 on August 25-28, 1948, in the aftermath of the Second World War. Notable politicians, academics, and artists attended, including Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, Frédéric Joliot-Curie

Frédéric Joliot-Curie

Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie , born Jean Frédéric Joliot, was a French physicist and Nobel laureate.-Early years:...

, Irène Joliot-Curie

Irène Joliot-Curie

Irène Joliot-Curie was a French scientist, the daughter of Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie and the wife of Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Jointly with her husband, Joliot-Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935 for their discovery of artificial radioactivity. This made the Curies...

, Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

, Paul Éluard

Paul Éluard

Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...

, Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...

, Julian Huxley

Julian Huxley

Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS was an English evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis...

, Dominique Desanti, Ilya Ehrenburg

Ilya Ehrenburg

Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg was a Soviet writer, journalist, translator, and cultural figure.Ehrenburg is among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union; he published around one hundred titles. He became known first and foremost as a novelist and a journalist - in particular, as a...

, Martin Andersen-Nexo, Sir John Boyd-Orr

John Boyd Orr, 1st Baron Boyd-Orr

John Boyd Orr, 1st Baron Boyd-Orr CH, DSO, MC, FRS , known as Sir John Boyd Orr from 1935 to 1949, was a Scottish teacher, doctor, biologist and politician who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his scientific research into nutrition and his work as the first Director-General of the United Nations...

, Olaf Stapledon

Olaf Stapledon

William Olaf Stapledon was a British philosopher and author of several influential works of science fiction.-Life:...

, Alexander Fadeyev, Julien Benda

Julien Benda

Julien Benda was a French philosopher and novelist. He remains famous for his essay The Betrayal of the Intellectuals.- Life :...

, William Gropper

William Gropper

William Victor "Bill" Gropper , was a U.S. cartoonist, painter, lithographer, and muralist. A committed radical, Gropper is best known for the political work which he contributed to such left wing publications as The Revolutionary Age, The Liberator, The New Masses, The Worker, and The Morning...

, Eugénie Cotton, Jerzy Borejsza

Jerzy Borejsza

Jerzy Borejsza , was a Polish communist activist and writer, chief of the communist press and publishing syndicate in the Stalinist period of the People's Republic of Poland.-Biography:Borejsza was born as Beniamin Goldberg to a Polish Jewish family...

, and Anna Seghers

Anna Seghers

Anna Seghers was a German writer famous for depicting the moral experience of the Second World War.- Life :...

. The Congress was marked by an anti-American and pro-communist tone.

The Congress elected a permanent International Committee of Intellectuals in Defence of Peace (also known as the International Committee of Intellectuals for Peace and the International Liaison Committee of Intellectuals for Peace) with headquarters in Paris. The Congress called for the establishment of national branches and the holding of national meetings along the same Communist lines as the World Congress. In accordance with this policy, a Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace was held in New York City in March 1949.

Julia Pirotte

Julia Pirotte

Julia Pirotte was a photojournalist known for her work in Marseille during the Second World War when she documented the French Resistance, and for photographs taken in the aftermath of the Kielce Pogrom of 1946....

, a photojournalist known for her work in the French Resistance

French Resistance

The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...

, covered the event.

External links

• World Peace Council http://old.wpc-in.org/website.htm
• Time magazine, Monday, Sep. 17, 1951 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,815418-2,00.html
• Canadian Peace Congress http://canadianpeacecongress.ca/random.asp?ID=162
• Encyclopedia of the Cold War, Volume 1‎ - Page 962 http://books.google.com/books?id=rUdmyzkw9q4C&pg=962
• Pathé news film of the Congress
• Polish Film Chronicle film of the Congress