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Day: September 1, 2009

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Remembering September 1, 1939

Merciful and loving Father, Who knowest the misfortune of our nation, with eyes of mercy look Thou down upon us; pardon our sins, make straight our ways, watch over a guide us amid the confusion of the world, that serving Thee in truth and righteousness, we may behold at length Thine everlasting light. Through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. — A Prayer for the Polish Nation from A Book of Devotions and Prayers According to the Use of the Polish National Catholic Church.

Zakazane piosenki – Dnia pierwszego września
Forbidden songs – On the First of September

Dnia pierwszego września, roku pamiętnego
Wróg napadł na Polskę z kraju sąsiedniego

Najwięcej się uwziął na naszą Warszawę
Warszawo kochana tyś jest miasto krwawe

Kiedyś byłaś piękna bogata wspaniała
Teraz tylko kupa gruzów pozostała

Domy popalone, szpitale zburzone
Gdzie się mają podziać ludzie poranione

Lecą bomby z nieba brak jest ludziom chleba
Nie tylko od bomby umrzeć będzie trzeba

Gdy biedna Warszawa w gruzach pozostała
To biedna Warszawa poddać się musiała

I tak się broniła całe trzy tygodnie
Jeszcze Pan Bóg pomści taką straszną zbrodnie.

From the Wikipedia list of events in September 1939:

  • September 1 —“ World War II: At 0445 Central European Time, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opens bombardment on the Westerplatte, a Polish military base outside Danzig, firing what are, according to many sources, the first shots of World War II. At the same time, regular Wehrmacht troops begin crossing the border into Poland.
  • September 15 —“ World War II: Diverse elements of the German Wehrmacht surround Warsaw and demand its surrender. The Poles refuse and the siege begins in earnest.
  • September 17 —“ World War II: The Soviet Union invades Poland and then occupies eastern Polish territories.
  • September 22 —“ World War II: Joint victory parade of the [German] Wehrmacht and [Russian] Red Army in Brest-Litovsk at the end of the Invasion of Poland.
  • September 28 —“ World War II: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree on a division of Poland after their invasion.
  • September 28 —“ World War II: Warsaw surrenders to Germany; Modlin surrenders a day later; the last Polish large operational unit surrenders near Kock 8 days later.

A link to memories of the beginning of the war and the mass deportation of Poles to Russian slave labor camps from three Roman Catholic sisters courtesy of the Young Fogey.

From the Guardian, a video of the dawn memorial service at Westerplatte where the first shots of the war were fired.

Dr. John Guzlowski will be speaking on Saturday, September 5, 2009 between 10 and 11:30am at Michigan’s commemoration service held in conjunction with the Polish Roman Catholic Mission at the Orchard Lake Schools.

September 1, 1939 Commemoration

Russian revisionist history, setting the stage for the next conflict by excusing the crimes of the past: “…but it wasn’t all our fault that we deported 1.7 million Poles to Siberia, killing 1.3 million in the process including the 25,000 unarmed Polish military officers, police and intellectuals we shot to death in Katyn over a few days.”

Poetry

September 1 – September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,”
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

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