On Thursday evening, 17th of July 2014 in Museum of the History of Polish Jews a meeting took place organised to promote the newest book dedicated to first polish candidate to the Nobel Peace Prize, entitled “Capitalist Pacifist Philanthropist. Jan Bloch (1836-1902)”. The figure of the businessman, active member of the movement encouraging nations to cease further armament and peaceful solutions of international disputes, also promoting many social initiatives and collector of art was introduced by: Daniel Grinberg, Justyna Guze, Elżbieta Mazur and Andrzej Żor. The meeting was conducted by Grażyna Pawlak. It took place the day before 100th anniversary of the First World War and was a good occasion to recall the ideas of Jan Bloch contained in his fundamental work “The War of the Future in its Technical Economic and Political Relations”, in which, long before the outbreak and over 11 years before the well-known in the West book by Norman Angell “The Great Illusion”, warned about the effects of prolonged military conflicts and their consequences in the form of vast devastation of global economy and outbreaks of uncontrolled social revolutions. He was wrong only in one matter: he believed (as did Angell later) that war will not start, due to very strong interdependence of global economy and that the nations and governments will show sufficient rationality to not allow the outbreak of conflict. Unfortunately, the opposite happened.
The panellists presented also information regarding the first War and Peace Museum in Luzern, established on the initiative of Jan Bloch, which gave the start of the global initiative of establishing such institutions around the world to refresh the historical memory and to act as a warning.
