They’re one of the largest and most influential ethnic groups around Chicago: the Polish. In this special episode, Worldview teams up with WBEZ’s Curious City to present a special mini-documentary that answers how the Polish became one of Chicago’s largest and most influential ethnic groups. And, come to think of it, is there anything to the claim that the city has the most Poles outside of Warsaw? Jesse Dukes from WBEZ’s Curious City answers those and more questions.

Correction: An earlier audio version of this story misstated the likely proportion of Poland’s population that was killed during World War II. While there are several conflicting studies, our figure was high and out of the range of credible estimates on the matter. That most accurate range is between 14 and 20 percent of the population.