English Audio Request

My name is Natasha Henry. I am a feminist historian, and author of two books, The Sister's Savant, Marie Curie and Brogna Luska, and Marie Brogna, The Pact of Sisters, which are both on the solidarity and the true history between Marie Curie and her sister, Bronia Luzka. What we don't know so much about Marie in France is that she was Polish, for example. A lot of people in France have said: "I think she's French" because of her family name Curie, because she is to be found in the Pantheon and because there are 300 schools in France that are called Lycée Marie Curie or Pierre et Marie Curie. She is a historical personality. She is the favourite personality of the French people, still today. And so, obviously, in French history, we do not know a lot about her. So, I have to go back to Poland and delve into this country's history. We can't understand Marie's story if we don't know her Polish origins. Marie and Bronia belong to a generation whose parents have decided that they were going to cope and succeed to intellectual research.
And at that time the intellectual research was scientific and related to the social. That's absolutely brilliant. If the whole world could act like that today, it would be absolutely wonderful. Marie's parents told her that they had lived so many years, decades of difficulties, of Russian occupation, of deprivation, of imprisonment. But what nobody can deprive you of is what you have in your head. It's an extraordinary pedagogy. In the middle of the 19th, end of the 19th century the Polish understood everything. And Marie and Bronia are the product of this. So, if I have understood something on Marie Curie, that I did not know before, it's that she is not alone. And it's that there is a huge group of people in Poland at the same time who receive the same education as her.
As a historian, I look for points of coherence. I hate lonely heroines. I do not believe in lonely heroines. I'm looking for the coherent elements. I believe that we are the product of an era. Marie's parents told her that she could not live without a purpose. She should know why she wakes up every morning. In Poland, there was a crowd of people who believed in youngsters' potential. They were artists, they were architects, they were poets, they were doctors. These were people who wanted to transform Poland. It's wonderful.
And they have succeeded to make their country independent. I love to go to Poland. Really, I find that it's like a second place where I could be for a long time. I could stay for months in Poland. I find that it's really nice. I found that there was a softness in the streets, all that. I found that when we were walking in Warsaw, it was rather nice compared to Paris. People are less nervous. I find that there are pleasant fragrances there. I'm very sensitive to fragrances. I enjoyed restaurants in Poland. I don't know. There's something like that in the air.