Reflections on National Survival and Self-Sacrifice in Patriotic Songs (Vol. 14, No. 1)

Pozegnanie Powstanca /Farewell to a Freedom Fighter by Artur Grottger (1837-1867)

Last summer, I was commissioned by the National Fryderyk Chopin Institute of Poland to write a scholarly article for publication in the Studia Chopinowskie research journal on the topic related to Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831), an eminent pianist and composer, and an important fore-runner of Chopin. I decided to write about the handwritten patriotic songbooks found in the archives of Museum Adama Mickiewicza in the Polish Library in Paris that were written by two of Szymanowska's children, her daughter Helena Szymanowska-Malewska and son Romuald Szymanowski. I had earlier written on Szymanowska's patriotic songs in the collection of Historical Chants (Spiewy Historyczne) by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz and had noticed these small notebooks while reviewing Szymanowska-related documents in the Polish Library in 2015. In the conclusion I compared the two visions of Polish patriotism and preserving Polish identity during the 123 years of partitions, when the country was divided between and ruled by three of its neighbors, Russia, Prussia and Austria (1795-1918). 

Page 3 from "Patriotic Songs" notebook by Helena Szymanowska and Romuald Szymanowski,

Polish Library in Paris, manuscript no. 956 from Adam Mickiewicz Museum collection

The first option favored self-sacrifice through participating in violent military actions against the foreign troops. The November and January Uprisings in 1830 and 1863 brought temporary freedom and bloody repression, including exile or deportation to Siberia of a whole generation of Polish nobility, whose lands were confiscated while they were sent far away.  This military option was documented in a multitude of patriotic songs from the period of the November Uprising in 1830-31 copied by Helena and Romuald. The second option was the road actually taken by Helena and her husband, friend of Adam Mickiewicz and a former member of the Zwiazek Filomatow, Franciszek Malewski. They lived in St. Petersburg in the heart of the Russian empire where Malewski was sent to exile, but later became a civil servant of the Tsarist government. They practiced patriotism, passed on the language and culture of Poland at home, not in public.  

The first vision of Polish patriotism if faithfully implemented leads to national annihilation and to the loss of the braves and brightest future leaders of the nation. The second approach of hiding the national sentiments at home while being publicly involved in the activities of the "oppressing" nation ensures biological survival, but may lead to the loss of the nation's soul and cultural identity. Either way, the situation is extremely difficult and we can only praise those who decided to fight and die and those who decided to hide and live, while preserving Polish culture and traditions in the homes during the partitions in the heart of the Russian Empire. 

The patriotic texts of songs and poems copied by Helena and Romuald Szymanowski shame those who refuse to fight, praise bravery and self-sacrifice, going to fight even against overwhelming military power of the enemy, even when the defeat is almost certain and the uprising would end in a river of blood. They are often cheerful, focus on the present joy of being alive and the future joy of having died for the nation. The same ideology of brutal self-sacrifice has survived the 19th century of partitions and uprisings, all the way through the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, now idealized and idolized as a symbol of true patriotism and valor. 

Let's review one example that continued to inspire youth to sacrifice their lives on the altar of national independence. "Polska mlodziez niechaj zyje" - found on p. 3 of manuscript 956 from Muzeum Adama Mickiewicza collection at the Polish Library in Paris, was later found in a songbook published in 1919 in Poznan, and used in the Silesian Uprisings.

Polska młodzież niechaj żyje, / Nikt jej nie przesadzi,

Bo jej ręka dobrze bije, / Głowa dobrze radzi.

Pognębieni, zapomnieni / Od całego świata,

Własnych baliśmy się cieni, / Brat unikał brata.

Long live Polish youth, / No one will surpass them,

For their hands fight well, / Their heads think well.

Depressed, forgotten / By the whole wide world,

We were afraid of our own shadows, / Brother avoided brother.

Ledwie polskie bronie błysły, / Polskie wstały dzieci!

Więzy nasze, jak szkło prysły, / Złota wolność świeci.

Każdy dzień żołnierza rodzi, / Mnożą się obrońcę:

Świetna zorza – po niej wschodzi / Najświetniejsze słońce!

As soon as Polish weapons flashed, / Polish children arose!

Our bondage broke like glass / Golden freedom shines.

Every day a soldier is born, / The defender multiplies:

Great aurora - after it rises / The most brilliant sun!

Niech do boju każdy biegnie! / Piękne tam skonanie,

Za jednego, który legnie, / Stu mścicieli stanie.

Zawsze Polak miał nadzieję / W mocy Niebios Pana;

On w nas jedność, zgodę sieje, / A przy nas wygrana.

Let all rush to the battle! / Beautiful dying there,

For each one who falls, / A hundred avengers will come.

Poles always had hope / In the might of Lord's Heavens;

He sows unity, harmony among us, / And Victory is with us. 

Polish text copied from: 

https://bibliotekapiosenki.pl/utwory/Polska_mlodziez_niechaj_zyje/tekst   Spiewnik pracownic polskich, wyd. 5 powiększone, Poznań, 1919, s. 65, 66. Translated by Maja Trochimczyk

Juliusz Kossak, postcard illustrating Piesn Legionow, 

Polish national anthem, a.k.a. Dabrowski Mazurka

Is "the most brilliant sun" of national freedom a complete delusion? Are these youth encouraged to die for nothing? Is God involved in any wars? Does God personally fight on the battlefields?  What would happen to a youth who failed to respond to this call to action and throwing his life away? Would that person be branded a traitor or a weakling.... a total failure? 

Let's recall how Fryderyk Chopin was torturing himself in Sttugart when the news about the end of the November Uprising in 1831 reached him, while he was on the way to Paris. He recorded his distress in the so-called Stuttgart Diary, a part of an album from 1829-1831, that, quite fittingly to our story, was destroyed in 1944 after the defeat of the Warsaw Uprising by Germans; now it is only known from photographs. The young composer also poured his distress and grief out into music, to mention the Étude, op. 10, no. 12 (“Revolutionary”), the Nocturne, op. 15, no. 3, and the Funeral March from the Piano Sonata, op. 35.  Chopin had left Poland on 2 November 1830, but his friends went back to fight, as he wanted to. However, he was urged on to an international career as a pianist and composer. Would we be better off if he never composed anything after turning 21 and instead returned to Poland and died in battle, as so many young men did? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VWHBHeNrg4 Eugene Kissin plays the Revolutionary Etude as an encore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2vLEQno9Ks Maurizio Pollini plays the Revolutionary Etude

January 1863 by Jakub Rozanski.

Thirty years later, the January 1863 Uprising was an even greater national tragedy, and the reason why so many Poles could be found on all continents: after the defeat by Russians, they were exiled to Siberia, or sent abroad without a right to come back, while their estates and property were confiscated.  A contemporary painting by Jakub Rozanski illustrates the discrepancy of military power symbolically, showing Polish insurgents in red square hats, with sabres or scythes, fighting a gigantic unhuman robot, a symbol of impersonal, powerful and merciless Russian army. 

As Piotr Szafranski writes: "The results were dismal. Russia military (mainly) made small work with the insurgents. Pretty much every single Commonwealth gentry family and their dog were either wholesale, or partly deported to Siberia, hanged, or sent into slave labour in Russian mines. Shock, across that society layer, was unprecedented. All females of that generation, those who managed to stay in Poland, wore, rest of their lives, black dresses, black jewelry etc." Death in battle, deportation to ice-cold Siberia, or exile were the choices faced by Polish participants of this failed Insurrection.

Na pobojowisku from "Polonia" cycle by Artur Grottger 

In a collection of short stories about young lives sacrificed on the altar of national independence while defending the nation, entitled Najwyzszy Lot (The Highest Flight) in Polish and published in 1925 by Ferdynand Ossendowski, we find many examples of this ideology. Ossendowski decided to honor the teens and young adults who went to fight for Poland during WWI, in the 1920 war against Soviet invasion, and in other battles for the Polish cause. His advocacy led to the construction of a monument to the teen heroes at the Military Cemetery in Warsaw in 1929. 

To humanize those who were thus honored, he found true stories of heroic youth who died on the battlefield, were murdered by Soviets, or caught and deported to Siberia to work in what was earlier called "katogra" (forced slave labor) and later "gulag" (penal camp). He transformed these vignettes into vivid short stories, filled with patriotic fervor and gratitude for their sacrifice. Ossendowski was right when he claimed that it was thanks to such selfless self-sacrifice of youth and others that in 1920 the Miracle of Warsaw took place and the Soviet armies were crushed by greatly outnumbered defenders. Thus, the communist ideology did not flow all over Europe and its march west was stopped and reversed.  So we have to be grateful. But then, what a loss of life! So hard not to grieve for the dead and for their tragic families, mothers and fathers who lost their sons...

Let's be kind and honor their sacrifices by remembering some of their names: Wladyslaw Sosnowski, Jan Surzycki, Henryk Kossowski, Boleslaw Dekanski, Jan Rotwand, Seweryn Marcinkowski, and many other high school students who followed the path of their forefathers and gave their young lives to defend their homeland from communist scourge. Ossendowski spent time in Siberia himself, first working as chemical engineer for the Tsarist government prior to WWI, then on the run from Soviet troops during the 1917-1919 revolution. He managed to escape through India and return to Poland, but remembered and commemorated the exiles that he met as they starved and froze to death while trying to escape. An earlier example of this fate is the family depicted in the paining below.  

Death in Siberia by Aleksander Sochaczewski (1843-1923), who participated 

in the January uprising and was exiled to Siberia until 1883.

Professor Andrzej Targowski, honorary president of the association of Children of the Warsaw Uprising and a child participant in the Uprising himself takes an exception to this idea and believes that not fighting a losing battle with an overwhelmingly stronger opponent is a better, smarter option, since those who would have died would then live, instead. 

Targowski writes (email of July 12, 2022):

 "Throughout the period of the People's Republic of Poland, the truth about the Uprising was covered up in order not to pour water on the propaganda mill. However, in the Third Polish Republic it was said that as long as the insurgents were alive, it was not appropriate to talk about this truth. I guess we can today and it doesn't stop us from glorifying the Uprising's heroes. But we also have to remember the civilians because they died at a rate 9 times higher than the insurgents. Innocent, scared, killed, wounded, expelled and robbed (of their possessions buried in the cellars) and without hope of living due to demolished or burnt houses and flats. Widows with children without profession and without means of livelihood. People with bad "papers", i.e. members of the Home Army. My Mother, an 85% war invalid and a graduate of the Warsaw University of Technology, received a disability pension in the amount of PLN 182 per month, because the government found out that she was in the Home Army. This was less than $2 on the black market. My Father did not return from Dora, where he sabotaged the production of V2 until the last days. He was hanged 3 days before the liberation of this camp. Why was he doing it? According to the recent trend of the Institute of National Remembrance, such defeats are a victory. Are they?"

"And what if there was no Uprising? 1) 200,000 would not have died, 200,000 would not have been wounded and seriously ill, and 600,000 would have been expelled; 2) Warsaw would not be destroyed; 3) The government would be a coalition a la Czech Republic; 4) Perhaps we could even have had the status of Finland, because Stalin was "afraid" of the Poles, i.e. that they would have blown up the Soviet Union from within, 5) the Soviet occupation by proxy would be easier to bear, and 6) the next generations of the old intelligentsia would grow up and help build Poland; this generation is missing even now, in the Third Polish Republic." 

Translated by Maja Trochimczyk from the Polish. A full version of this text has appeared in Polish in "Biuletyn Stowarzyszenia Dzieci Powstania 1944" and was entitled SYNDROM POWSTAŃCZY A SAMO-ROZBIÓR MENTALNY (The Insurgent's Syndrome and the Mental Self-Analysis).

One of hundreds of monuments to civilians shot by Germans during the Warsaw Uprising.

I agree with Professor Targowski's ideas. Brave insurrections and selfless sacrifice for the nation are not the best for the national interest.  But in the Polish national mythology, framed by multiple failed uprisings and insurrections against much more powerful adversaries, this myth of self-sacrifice as the best option for expressing patriotism has become deeply embedded, and melded with the cult of suffering and sorrow. The latter is fed by Christian theology of the Crucified Christ, and Mater Dolorosa, the tortured son and sorrowful mother.  So Poland is covered with monuments to the dead, like the cement cross reproduced above, and the monument that Ossendowski built for the children fighting in the defense of Warsaw against the Soviets in 1920.

What if we discarded this onerous burden? And focused on Life and Joy instead? One reason I'm against blind faith in military action, the cult of violence and suffering is because hate breeds hate, violence breeds violence. Only Love is the solution.  If you focus on Life and appreciate being alive as the ultimate gift, you will love yourself and all around you.  You will not be able to kill them, and if they kill you, you will just die, go to rest, and reincarnate again. After all, we are all ONE, members of one humanity. But the nations are important and should be preserved, with their distinct cultures, languages, histories, areas of  land... It is a complex issue and I cannot solve it here, or figure out a workable solution for my own worldview. 

Yet, I'm still grateful for the sacrifices of those who chose to fight, like my Mom's friend Barbara Wysocka, whose entire family perished in the Uprising and she never married. After her death, her medals went to my Mom, and after she died in 2013, I donated these medals to the Polish Museum of the Warsaw Uprising. Here is this story:

https://chopinwithcherries.blogspot.com/2022/09/remembering-polish-war-anniversaries.html

Medals of Barbara Wysocka donated to the Museum of Warsaw Uprising in 2013.

So can we have our cake and eat it too? Can we praise and thank those who died for the homeland, fighting against much stronger and better equipped enemies, while also understanding that their sacrifice was a tragic loss and it would have been much better for the nation, if they did not fight and did not die? 

Remembering Polish War Anniversaries (Vol. 13, No. 4)

Remembering the 83rd anniversary of the outbreak of World War II 

and the 78th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising 

A short speech on the subject of Polish war anniversaries given at the ceremony to mark the start of the school year at the Polish Alma Mater in Los Angeles. My speech is in Polish, so I decided to create an English translation and add some poems. 

Dear children, ladies and gentlemen, As Vice President for Public Affairs of the Polish American Congress in California, I am to remind you all of important historical anniversaries related to the month of September.

On September 1, we celebrate the anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War. This year it is already the 83rd. One might ask, after more than 80 years, why should we care about this? Why must we remember? Why is Poland covered with monuments to those murdered during the war? Why do refuse to forget this national tragedy? When I was telling my youngest son about the war, still in elementary school, he said to me: "Mom, why are you telling me about this, it is not important, if it were important, they would write about it in my American textbooks..." Luckily, he changed his mind. But the fact is: they did not write and do not write about this. So, we have to remember.

As Poles in exile, those who emigrated from the country, and those already born here, that is, the second and third generation of the Polish diaspora, we must remember the history of our first homeland. The Second World War is a huge tragedy for the Polish nation. Poland was attacked by the Germans on September 1, 1939, on many fronts simultaneously, with provocations, when the Germans disguised prisoners in Polish uniforms and killed them as if in battle; to lie to the world that it was Poland that attacked Germany first. Now these historic frauds are called "false flags." Poland defended itself desperately, but it fell when stabbed in the back: on September 17, 1939, the country was divided between the two occupiers, the Soviet Union and Germany.

During the war, over 6 million people died in Poland, more than one fifth or 22% of the country's population. Of each 1000 residents of the country, 220 died during the war; in comparison, Great Britain lost 8 and France 15. The second country most affected was the Soviet Union with 115 residents killed out of each thousand. Everyone in America knows that about 2.7 million Polish Jews died in the Holocaust; but the losses of Slavs in Poland were higher: 2,770,000 people died only on territories occupied by the Germans. They were mainly Catholics. The first prisoners of Auschwitz KL were Polish Slavs, Catholics. Among them were my mother's uncles, two Catholic priests from the Wajszczuk family, first sent to Auschwitz KL, and then to Dachau, where the clergy was imprisoned.

Let us add to this the huge number of people murdered and displaced by the Soviets, deported from the Eastern Borderlands (what is now western Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania) to Siberia or Kazakhstan, where another million people died. In the Borderlands, "Kresy," about 3.5 million people lost their homes, farms, estates, businesses… Everything except their lives. This was the story of my grandparents and my mother from Baranowicze, now in Belarus, as well as of the whole family from the vicinity of Nowogrodek and Lake Switez, where Polish national bard, Adam Mickiewicz, was born and raised.  I wrote about this in a short article dedicated to gold heirlooms my Mom left for me: https://polishamericanstudies.org/text/181/wajszczuk-gold.html.  Another story about the brave women of my extended family and their resilience during and after the war appeared on this blog: http://chopinwithcherries.blogspot.com/2021/01/portraits-of-survivors-babcia-prababcia.html.

Grandma Maria Wajszczuk and her sister Jadwiga Hordziejewska

We must all remember about Poles deported to Siberia, because in America we do not hear about them. I dedicated a book of poems to some of the victims and survivors, entitled The Rainy Bread ... My mother's aunt Irena De Belina, saved as an orphan from Siberia by Anders' army, ended up in Chicago via Iran and Switzerland. In her old age in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she told schoolchildren about the war hunger, how her parents died in a gulag . There are many such stories in our communities. I wrote two poems about her, the first one is below, with a lesson about  food and war-time hunger: 

≡ PEELING THE POTATOES ≡

~ for Grandma Maria Wajszczuk, neé Wasiuk (1906-1973)

Her Grandma showed her how to hold 

the knife, cut a straight, narrow strip,

keeping the creamy flesh nearly intact, 

ready for the pot of boiling water. 

Don’t throw away any food. The old refrain. 

My sisters, Tonia and Irena lived on potato peels

in Siberia. She is confused. She knows

Ciocia Tonia — glasses on the tip of her nose,

perfectly even dentures — but Irena? Who is that? 

They were all deported to Siberia. Not sure how

Irena’s parents died — of typhus, or starvation, maybe?

They used to pick through garbage heaps, 

look for rotten cabbage, kitchen refuse 

to cook and eat. They cooked and ate anything 

they found under the snow, frozen solid. 

The water’s boiling. Babcia guides her hand:

You have to tilt the cutting board

toward the pot, slide the potatoes in.

Don’t let them drop and splash you. 

What happened next? The orphaned children

went with the Anders’s Army and the Red Cross

to Iran, Switzerland, Chicago. The kitchen

fills with memories. Mist above the stove.

Grandma piles up buttery, steaming,

mashed potatoes on her plate. Eat, child, eat.   

Ten years later, Aunt Irena came to visit.

She looked like Grandma, only smaller.

Her legs were crooked. 

 

The crooked legs of Aunt Irena were due to starvation and lack of sunlight in childhood, she had rickets in Siberia.  At least, she survived.  So did the mother of Director of the Oral Archives of the former inhabitants of the eastern Borderlands at the Historical Museum of Warsaw, Jan Jakub Kolski. When he told her story at the meeting of the Kresy-Syberia Association in Warsaw in  2016, I wrote the following poem. 

≡ A SONG FOR A KEY ≡

                 ~ for Jan Jakub Kolski and his Mother

This is a key.

This is an iron key.

This is a large, iron key.

This is an old, large, iron key.

A key my mother carried in her purse.

This is an old, large, wrought-iron key my mother 

carried in her purse every single day.

This is a field.

This is a flat field.

This is a flat, empty field.

This is a flat, empty field in the Ukraine

that used to be Poland. A flat, empty field 

where my mother’s house once stood, surrounded 

by a tall wooden fence with a tall wooden gate, 

and a solid, large, wrought-iron lock.

They told her: pack!

They told her: go!

They told her: out!

You do not belong.

This is our land.

There is not house.

There is no fence.

There is no gate.

This is the key.

On the Eastern front, we should also remember the officers of the Polish Army arrested by the Soviets (and protected by international treaties as Prisoners of War) who were murdered in Katyn near Smolensk, Ukraine: all 22,000 of them. After the war, Soviet propaganda claimed that it was a crime of the Germans. This is what I was taught at my high school, Liceum Mikolaja Kopernika. Another lie, another "false flag." All the students knew the truth anyway, but they didn't say anything aloud, why bother? Why put their families in danger and their academic future at risk? 

In German-occupied Poland, the aim of the occupying forces was to destroy the Polish leaders and transform the Polish nation into a nation of slaves, stupid, uneducated laborers. The so-called Intelligenzaktion or Action AB led to the death of one third of the Polish intelligentsia: 39% of doctors, 33% of teachers, 30% of scientists and university professors, 28% of priests and 26% of lawyers. 

Not everyone knows that during the war there were over 900 labor camps in Germany; that over 2 million Poles and Polish women were sent to slave labor; many of them died of exhaustion.  Poet John  Z. Guzlowski is a child of a prisoner from Buchenwald, and a forced-labor slave. Born in a camp in Germany, he dedicated several books to the memory of his parents, deeply traumatized by the war. 

In my rave review of Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded (Aquila Polonica, 2015) published in the Cosmopolitan Review in 2016, I wrote: 

"Some books take a lifetime to write, yet they can be read in one sleepless night, filled with tears of compassion and a heaviness of heart. John Z. Guzlowski’s book of poetic memoirs is exactly such a book: an unforgettable, painful personal history, distilling the horrors of his parents’ experiences in German labor and concentration camps into transcendent artwork of lucid beauty. [...] It is only through this gradual unveiling of the depth of suffering inflicted on Guzlowski’s mother and father, that we become aware of the historic forces that forged their fates, brought them together, and impacted their son so severely that he spent the past thirty years obsessively writing about his parents’ war-time ordeal and its post-war consequences, as if there were no other topics worthy of his pen.[...] The inmates were dehumanized in the German camps, they became animals or plants: the mother – a suffocating dog, the father – “a bony mule with the hard eyes / one encounters in nightmares or in hell” (“What a Starving Man Has”). In Buchenwald and other camps, Guzlowski’s father and his fellow inmates were like mules carrying heavy loads, and dying of exhaustion:

“These men belonged to the Germans

the way a mule belonged to the Germans

and the Germans stood watching

their hunger and then their deaths,

watched them as if they were dead trees

in the wind, and waited for them to fall,

and some of the men did…”

While being tortured and abused, Guzlowski’s father thought of what he could not say to the inexplicably cruel guards: “Sirs, we are all / brothers and if this war ever ends, / please, never tell your children / what you’ve done to me today.” (“The Work my Father did in Germany”). He was right, they did not tell… Indeed, these crimes were largely forgotten, Germany was rebuilt with American help, while the German concentration camps were renamed “Polish concentration camps” in a revisionist twist, Goebbels-style."  

A profound trauma, like that of the Guzlowski family, takes years to heal. It is as if the whole Polish nation still suffers from the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - the negativity, aggression, anger and outbursts at others are a superficial proof of that. Wounded animals lash out at everyone approaching them. Wounded people get angry and hostile for no apparent reason... But let us return to our story. 

Let us remember that until 1989, until the first free elections and the end of the Polish People's Republic, there was the Polish Government of the Second Republic in London. The second, because the First is the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, enslaved for 123 years of partitions by Russia, Prussia and Austria. We remember it on May 3, on the Constitution Day. The Second Republic of Poland survived only 20 years from the end of the First World War in 1918. On November 11, we celebrate Independence Day. 

We can be proud that Poland is the only country in Europe that did not have a collaborator government that cooperated with Germany! During the war, in occupied Poland, the Polish Home Army did not lay down their arms, around 400,000 people, mostly young people, belonged to underground troops. The Home Army trained them in hiding. At home, young people learned Polish, history, literature, and traditions. The underground activities were vast; they included academic lectures and private concerts of Chopin's music, which was forbidden by the Germans. Chopin's monuments were also destroyed. The time of war in Poland was hard, poor, full of hunger, disease and trauma.

Destruction of Chopin monument in Warsaw

Yet, Poles have a talent for survival. They mobilize in crisis. Their slogan: God, Honor, Homeland motivates them to action. And so, on August 1, 1944, the badly unarmed, poorly trained young inhabitants of Warsaw went into battle. The Soviet army had already entered the territories of Polesie near Lublin and Mazowsze to Vistula; they were already approaching Warsaw. If the country's capital could be liberated and the government from London could return, Poland could have really regained independence.

Unfortunately, Stalin mailed other plans. He had previously arranged them with Churchill, Prime Minister of England and with the American President Roosevelt. As early as 1943, they gave up power  to rule over Poland and other countries to Soviet Russia in secret agreements in Yalta and Tehran. Poles in Warsaw did not know anything about it when they commenced their heroic battle 78 years ago.

Their sacrifice and courage are indescribable. The Warsaw Uprising lasted until October 2, for as long as 63 days. It ended with a defeat. The losses of the Polish civilian and military population were enormous; up to 18,000 soldiers died in battles and about 200,000 civilians were killed. We should honor their memory.

This devastating fight for freedom so enraged the German authorities, that Hitler ordered the city to be completely demolished and all inhabitants to be deported. Soviet troops waited on the other bank of the Vistula until Warsaw bleeds out. The so-called "liberation" did not come until January 17, 1945, when the Russians entered the empty ruins.

On my way to school in Warsaw, every day I walked past three monuments with the inscriptions "Site made sacred by the blood of Polish victims" and our school building had round holes from bullets on its thick gray walls. I commemorated the walk to school in a poem: 

≡ THE WAY TO SCHOOL ≡

Walking to her high school on Bema Street. 

she counted three cement crosses in ten minutes 

every morning.

One in the middle of her subdivision of apartment blocks, 

standing guard at the edge of chipped asphalt: 

Four hundred.

One in the mini-park, where two gravel paths cross 

on a patch of overgrown grass after you go under the train bridge: 

Nine hundred.

One on the wall of a grimy three-story building, 

with round bullet holes still visible in the stained, grey stucco: 

Twenty-two hundred.

She memorized the inscriptions: “This place is sanctified 

by the blood of Poles fighting for freedom, murdered by Hitlerites.” 

 “Some Germans were good, not Nazis,” her teacher said, 

“They marched in the May 1st parades.”

Only the numbers differed, and dates:

August 5, August 6, August 7, 1944. The Uprising.

50 thousand civilians shot in the streets of Warsaw. 

The bullets came fast. Those soldiers had practice. 

Wehrmacht, Police Batalions, RONA, Waffen SS. 

No shortage of killers. Some had children back home. 

She did not want to think of thousands.

She did not want to know their names.

 

The ruins of the Royal Castle in 1945; by 1970s the debris was cleared, only the wall with square window hole remained (far in the center). Wikimedia Commons

While I commuted to the music school in the rebuilt Old Town of Warsaw in the 1970s, I could see the remains of the royal palace: a piece of the last wall with a window hole through which the moon would peek... The castle was beautifully rebuilt - this painstaking and meticulous project lasted for 20 years. So we can say that the cure for war is peace, the cure for destruction is creation. But it is easy to destroy something, and much harder to rebuild.

Was it worth it? Historians' discussion continues as we praise the heroes 78 years after their tragic struggle. Among us in California is Professor Andrzej Targowski, a child of the Uprising. He says that the uprising was a grave mistake, because the losses were too extensive, both human and material. The city's inhabitants were murdered. The buildings, libraries and museums were dynamited and burned down. Had the Uprising not taken place, 200,000 inhabitants of Warsaw would have had a chance of survival. And in a nation's crisis, survival is paramount. It's easy to die, dreaming of glory. It's harder, smarter, to survive, keep the traditions quietly, at home, to pass the memory on to the next generations.

How important is this memory today, when Polish Slavic history is not found in American textbooks. So let us remember: who we are, where we came from, where we are going. Let studying in a Polish school fill us with pride in our traditions, in our great history. Let this experience teach us to build and create, to work selflessly in community organizations, and to help others. 

On behalf of the Polish American Congress, I wish all children and youth a wonderful and fruitful school year. And no matter what, let's not forget to laugh. Let me end this article with a poem about the Warsaw Uprising Survivor, my Mom's friend: 

Medals of Barbara Wysocka, donated to the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising in 2013.

≡ PANI BASIA ≡

~ in memoriam Barbara Wysocka, “Irma” soldier in the Warsaw 

   Uprising, prisoner of Stutthof Camp (1927-1997) 

Who was this stranger at Christmas Eve dinners? 

A tall, stern lady who did not smile or talk to children. 

Distinguished. Distant. Too stiff for hugging. 

She looked at us as if from another planet. 

She ate her food slowly, methodically,

relishing each sip of the hot beet soup, 

gingerly picking fishbones out of carp in aspic. 

An aura of loneliness spread out around her. 

Why did Mom take her for vacation to Abu Dhabi,

on an exotic adventure, to see red sands, palms, camels?

The answer waited for decades in packets 

of old letters, medals earned during the war. 

She was “Irma,” a teen liaison for Division Baszta 

in Mokotów. Fought to the end, Warsaw’s fall. 

Imprisoned in the Stutthof Concentration Camp. 

Her whole family perished. All alone.

Never married. Wrapped in her grief 

like a cashmere shawl.

On her vacation in Persian Gulf, she saw 

wobbly camels race – and finally laughed. 

 

https://moonrisepress.com/the-rainy-bread-by-maja-trochimczyk.html

All poems cited above are from The Rainy Bread: More Poems from Exile, second expanded edition of 2021 of the book initially published in 2016 and honored with the Creative Arts Prize by the Polish American Historical Association. 

A Piano Gift for the Chopin University of Music, to Remember my Parents (Vol. 4, No. 9)

When I started learning music back in the 1960s in Poland, I played the violin (badly), then viola (better), and then a bit of piano... At the Elsner Music High School and the Chopin University, we called it "mandatory piano with both hands" - and this is what it was, a required class done because you had to, not very musical. However, I learned to sightread at the keyboard and entertain myself by singing one part and playing two other parts of Bach's Kunst der Fuge. I also loved singing along with his Chorales. In playing Chopin, I did not move beyond easy preludes and nocturnes, but liked playing for myself, getting lost in the shifting moods and soaring melodies of his music.

The hours at the keyboard are long gone and my California upright sits in pieces in the garage, but the Arnold Fibiger "semi-concert" upright has survived in excellent shape in my Mom's place in Warsaw. After her death this summer, I donated the piano to my Warsaw Alma Mater - Fryderyk Chopin University of Music. It used to be "Academy" when I attended it and "State Higher School of Music" a decade earlier. I thought of selling it, but decided that a donation would be a better choice than getting a measly $200 for this beauty. ..

The piano is decorated with Art Nouveau reliefs and carvings; two Art Nouveau candleholders attached in front, and most of the keys still in the original ivory, with some yellowed inserts in plastic. No chance for historical restoration of those keys - ivory is banned, and rightly so... but was not at that time. I hope that my piano will bring long hours of enjoyment to the University's music students and will enrich its permanent collection of antique instruments.

 LINEN OF GRANDMA & GREAT GRANDMA AT THE MUSEUM OF ETHNOGRAPHY 

While in Warsaw, I made four other donations - the Museum of Ethnography received three cuts of home-made linen, two from my great grandmother on the maternal side - Konstancja Wasiuk, and one made from scratch, that is from planting the flax, through making the thread, to weaving the fabric - by my grandmother Nina Niegierysz - Trochimczyk.

 The long stretch of linen was made for towels, with a standard "home-made" (samodzial) weave, 70cm wide and over 4 meters long. The staff at the Museum of Ethnography were thrilled to unwrap and measure the fabric. My grandma told me how she made it, how they planted the flax, harvested the long stems, soaked and beat the stems to create the material for weaving, in a long-lasting process. She then made the thread using her spinning wheel ("kolowrotek"), and finally wove the fabric for her dowry when she was getting married. She was born in 1906 so this activity took place in mid-1920s on their estate in Mieleszki.

 The patterns on two shorter cuts of homemade linen are much more ornate. They were made by a professional weaver near the village of Trzebieszow. My great grandmother Konstancja was repatriated after the war, that is thrown out of the family estate near Baranowicza in the borderlands part of eastern Poland (Kresy, now Belarus), with whatever she could take and pack in the alloted part of the train, and sent back to Poland, while Soviets took over the family estate to convert it to Kolchoz...

She brought with her not only her intense faith in Jesus and a bad temper to boost, but also various strange remnants of her former life, including large spools of linen thread, that was made by her farm girls back home, in the Kresy... The thread made on the estate near Baranowicze was woven into different patterned fabric and used for towels, tablecloth... The museum will use it in its fabric collection.

 BARBARA WYSOCKA'S MEDALS AT THE MUSEUM OF WARSAW UPRISING

The next stop was the Museum of Warsaw Uprising in Warsaw-Wola. I brought there the medals, photographs, and letters of Barbara Wysocka, one of my mother's close friends who house-sat the condo during her travels, and was invited to all major family functions, especially Christmas Eve (when no person should be alone) and Easter breakfast...

 Pani Basia was single, and had no family at all. Her entire family died in the Warsaw Uprising and she was the lone survivor. She never married, never had children... What she had were her medals for bravery and a handful of pictures. The Museum staff took the medals, though was not happy with the one bestowed upon the veteran freedom fighter by the communist government (even though it was the highest honor, Polonia Restituta!) and did not like any of her post-war pictures nor letters...

 

 

They took the photos in uniform, of the young Barbara on the poligon, and with other soldier-friends before the war... She was not famous and I do not even know what her Home Army pseudonym was. After the war she had ordinary life, finished college, worked in an office. Thanks to my Mom, she had an "adopted" family - us - and spent her weekends in the summer house, holidays at our table, and one colorful vacation (at the expense of my parents) in Abu Dhabi where my father worked for over 20 years and my mother lived for six months each year, spending her winters in the warm south and summers in cool Poland.

Barbara Wysocka's memory should be preserved by a museum dedicated to this cause - where many of her colleagues are also remembered. I'm glad that the Museum took the medals, but troubled that they wanted to deny that there was any good done in the "communist" times - without these times as a bridge, there would have been no independent Poland today. Some Home Army veterans were hounded and killed, others survived and helped rebuild the country. Warsaw was completely destroyed by Germans who forcefully removed all inhabitants and blew out all buildings, especially the large and historic ones... leaving shantytowns on the outskirts untouched, pocked by bullet holes.... Now, the historic core of the Old Town was rebuilt and Warsaw grows, with its history carefully reconstructed...

TRAVEL GUIDES AT THE MUSEUM OF SPORTS AND TOURISM AND THE TROCHIMCZYK FAMILY AT THE MUSEUM OF DIGITAL INFORMATION

 My parents, Henryka and Aleksy Trochimczyk, loved to travel, loved to see the world and visit far away places. My father, an electrical engineering specializing in power plants, worked first in Iraq and then in the United Arab Emirates - Abu Dhabi. He spent most of his career working abroad, as an electrical engineer building a sugar beet refinery in Mosul, Iraq, and then the power plant and water desalination plant in Abu Dhabi. My mom joined him there, and the family traveled both there and through Europe - Greece, Turkey, Italy...

My mom also went to Spain and took a three month tour of the U.S. while staying with me in Canada. One day she said, I'm going for a trip, the next day she was on a Greyhound bus... Similarly, when Princess Diana died, my Mom decided to pay her respect and my parents drove to London for the funeral. All these trips were documented in picture albums and in guides from the many places visited.

These guides and albums were donated to the Museum of Sports and Tourism and will enrich the permanent collection. The large yellow suitcase of my parents photographs, especially from Abu Dhabi and my mom's American tours, was borrowed by Mr. Piotr Niedziela of the Museum of Digital Information. He loved working with negatives and after reviewing the set of materials, picked over 600 images for his collection to illustrate an important part of Polish history - Polish engineers working abroad, building infrastructure in many countries. The Persian Gulf was certainly exotic enough to merit attention....