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In memoriam

From the Washington Post: George de Wrzalinski, GSA librarian and Polish emigre

George de Wrzalinski, a retired General Services Administration librarian and the scion of an aristocratic Polish family who during World War II was pressed into forced labor in a German aircraft factory, died Aug. 13 at the Powhatan Nursing Home in Falls Church.

He was 85 and died of complications related to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure and the effects of a stroke suffered in May, said his executor and friend, Margaret Shannon.

Mr. Wrzalinski (pronounced “Jalinsky”) retired from the GSA in 1997 as chief librarian of the technical division of the National Capital Region. This job included oversight of architectural, engineering and other blueprints for federal buildings in the Washington area, including the White House.

He came to the United States in 1954 and was naturalized as a citizen in 1960. His neighbors said he flew a U.S. flag at his house in Arlington County every day, but he also retained his Polish roots and Old World mannerisms.

“When he greeted me, he always kissed my hand,” said Shannon, who lived next door to Mr. Wrzalinski for 36 years.

Jerzy Ludwik de Wrzalinski was born Jan. 30, 1926, in Poznan, Poland. His father was a colonel in the Polish army and would later become mayor of Gniesno. His mother was a concert pianist, and a grandmother was a Polish princess. A twin sister died at birth.

In 1940, he was a 14-year-old high school student in Gniesno when the occupying Germans shipped him to an aircraft factory near Breslau, where he ­reinstalled oxygen lines in damaged aircraft. He would later tell friends that he began smoking in those years because laborers who smoked were allowed cigarette breaks. (He quit smoking in 1983.)

Near the end of the war, he was relocated to a forced labor camp at Aschersleben, which was a subcamp of Buchenwald. He was liberated by the British there in April 1945.

After the war, Mr. Wrzalinski lived in displaced persons camps in Germany for several years. He was fluent in German, Polish, English, French and Russian, and he had various translating jobs.

Upon immigrating to the United States, he settled in St. Paul, Minn., where he worked in the personnel office of Remington Rand, the business-machine manufacturer. He had said he was once denied a pay raise there with the explanation that “he can be happy that he’s in America.” He studied English at the University of Minnesota’s extension division.

When he became a U.S. citizen in St. Paul, he changed his first name, Jerzy, to its anglicized version, George.

He moved to the Washington area in the early 1960s and became a cataloguer and analyst for a College Park documentation company. Later he was a documents and information specialist for a NASA contractor. He joined the GSA in 1984 and retired in 1997.

Mr. Wrzalinski never married, and he had no immediate survivors.

In the last years of his life, his neighbors in Fairlington supervised his medical care and helped look after his house, where in addition to the American flag, he flew the Polish flag and the state flags of Maryland and Virginia daily. He had an elaborate and extensive flower garden.

He looked the part of a European aristocrat. On summer days, he wore tennis whites, unwrinkled and pressed immaculately, and he liked to invite friends and neighbors over for drinks in the evening. He frequented the Fairlington community swimming pool, where he befriended the Polish lifeguards.

Marian Wojciechowski, 97, of Las Vegas

Passed away June 5, 2011. Was born April 25, 1914, in Polaniec, Poland.

Marian was a World War II veteran, a platoon leader who fought German forces Sept. 1, 1939 at the Battle of Mokra, considered to be a tactical victory for the Polish cavalry. His regiment, the 21st Pulk Ulanow Nadwislanskich, was later awarded the Virtuti Militari. He continued fighting after Russia attacked Sept. 17, 1939, then joined the Polish underground resistance. He was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo in Radom, and sent to Auschwitz (Nr. 50333), Gross Rosen, and Leitmeritz concentration camps. In the displaced persons camps of post-war Germany, he met and married Wladyslawa Poniecka, who had survived the Gestapo prison Pawiak in Warsaw, and the concentration camp Ravensbruck (Nr. 7532) north of Berlin. In 1950, they came to America with their daughter, and settled in Toledo, Ohio.

Marian was awarded a master’s degree in economics and business administration from the Warsaw School of Economics in 1937. He worked as auditor for the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives before his arrest in 1942. From 1946-1947, he was an officer in the Polish Civilian Guard under the command of the U.S. Army in the American Zone of West Germany. He also served as chief liaison officer for Polish groups to the International Refugee Organization. Marian was the owner and editor of the Polish-language weekly newspaper “Ameryka Echo” in Toledo until 1961. He worked for many years as urban renewal project administrator with the City of Toledo. From 1980-1994 he was an administrator with the Neighborhood Housing Services of Toledo, finally retiring at the age of 80. Marian moved to Las Vegas in 1998 to be closer to his family.

Marian was a past commander of the Polish Army Veterans Association Post 74 in Toledo for 10 years, a member of American Legion Post 545 in Toledo, and a member of the VFW. He actively participated in many organizations, such as the Polish American Congress and Polish National Alliance. Marian also received many honors and awards during his lifetime, including medals for his military service during World War II and his work in urban development. In 2009, at the age of 95, Marian realized his wish to return to Mokra to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II. He also visited the former Polish Army Cadet Officers Cavalry School in Grudziadz, and even Auschwitz along the way. He was accompanied on this splendid adventure by his grandson Craig with Jodi, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, and Dr. Roman Rozycki of the Las Vegas Polish community.

From the Modjeska Club: Tadeusz Bociański

Born 17 August 1935. Died 14 July 2011. Tadeusz Bociański served as the President of the Modjeska Club from 1983 to 1989. His activities contributed to elevating the Club to its high social status and to establishing its broad scope of cultural activities. With an extraordinarily limited budget, he was able to bring to California the most distinguished Polish politicians, actors and artists. As the owner of a Cultural Agency PolArt he organized performances by famous Polish theaters and cabarets throughout the entire West Coast and the Southwest. He was also active in other social and cultural organizations. On 17 January 1998, he received the Cavalier Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for his achievements in promoting Polish culture abroad.

Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord!

Perspective, Poetry, , ,

Reflections – 10 Years Later

From John Guzlowski, his poem Sept 13, 2001 found in his post: 9/11 — Ten Years Later

I’ve written a number of poems about 9/11 over the years. The first one was written a couple days of 9/11. That poem talked about how I wanted an end to 9/11. It didn’t happen then, and it hasn’t happened since…

Ted Monica, a fellow former seminarian at Wadhams Hall, and an Episcopal priest, offers his music: Sisters and Brothers.

To the Children of Emma Lazarus – a poem for 9/11 by Konrad Tademar

From Howard Community College on Danuta Hinc’s book To Kill the Other: A question of killing: Howard County author searches for an answer

Five days. That’s all it took after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, for Danuta Hinc to realize that she needed to write a book about how such a thing could happen.

“I realized that I needed to know what leads people to make such extreme choices,” says Hinc, who teaches professional writing at the University of Maryland College Park. “And the next question I asked was: Am I capable of killing someone?”

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Hinc stood in the living room of her Ellicott City townhouse, riveted to the TV screen, unable to sit down, unable to comprehend what she was witnessing.

“Like everyone else, I thought it was an accident. When the second plane hit, I realized to my horror that it was not,” says Hinc, who is in her early 40s and grew up in Poland under Communist oppression.

“My first thought was ‘They must be so organized,’ ” she remembers. Then she realized she didn’t know a thing about them.

“I hated them with all my heart. But I didn’t like that I hated them,” she says.

What eventually came of that rush of tangled emotions and questions, some 10 years later, is Hinc’s book, “To Kill the Other.” It’s a fictional story of a boy who grows up to become a terrorist. It’s not about al-Qaeda; it’s not about ideology. It’s about the choices human beings make.

She spent three and a half years researching and writing the story, which she first wrote in Polish. Then she spent another two-and-a-half years translating it into English. At the time, she was an adjunct professor of English and religion at Howard Community College.

“To Kill the Other” follows the journey of Taher, a sensitive Egyptian boy, from the time he was 7 to his presence as a terrorist on the first plane to hit the World Trade Center…

[AMAZONPRODUCT=1617390194]

Mark Skinner reflects for More Magazine: 9/11 Changed My Life

“I spent so many years doing what I ‘should’ do,” says Mary Skinner, who went from financial exec to award-winning filmmaker.

For 20 years, Mary Skinner climbed the corporate ladder in financial communications, at one point working on the 106th floor of Two World Trade Center, before moving to San Francisco to be close to her family. In the months leading up to 9/11, her life was in limbo. Living with her parents, she wrestled with an internal conflict about her professional future. “I spent so many years doing what I ‘should’ do,” she says. She wanted to return to New York, and even flew there that summer for an interview with a financial services start-up. When the ‘no-thanks’ letter arrived, her disappointment was sharp.

But as the catastrophe unfolded, Skinner’s hesitation disappeared. “I knew friends were caught on certain floors and didn’t make it,” she says. “I felt: I need to be there right now. I’ve got to go back. I had devoted my talent, heart and brain cells to helping somebody make a little more money on currency arbitrage. In the face of what was going on in the world, I felt like, that’s a sin.”

Two months later, Skinner boarded a plane for New York – without a job or a place to live, and for the first time in her professional life, without a plan.

She found temp office work, reconnected with old friends and took writing classes. She enrolled in a documentary filmmaking class at the New School, wanting to make a film about her Polish-born, Catholic mother, Klotylda, who was orphaned and imprisoned during World War II and cared for by strangers afterwards. Klotylda wouldn’t agree to be her subject. Haunted by her mother’s experiences, Skinner continued with her research, uncovering more stories of children saved by heroic strangers…

From Jim Wallis at Sojourners: 10 Years After 9/11: The Good and the Bad

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was at home in Washington, D.C. getting ready to go to Sojourners’ office. I was upstairs listening to the news on NPR when I heard the first confusing report of a plane crashing into the south tower of the World Trade Center. I immediately called downstairs to Joy and asked her to turn on the television to see what was going on. Moments later, as we ate breakfast together with our three-year-old son Luke, we watched the second plane strike the north tower. I still remember my first response to Joy, “This is going to be bad, very bad,” I said.

Of course, I meant more than just the damage to the Twin Towers and the lives lost, which became far greater than any of us imagined at first. Rather, my first and deepest concern was what something like this could do to our our nation’s soul. I was afraid of how America would respond to a terrorist attack of this scope.

But as the Towers collapsed, and the suffering of this horrible event became increasingly clear in the hours and days that followed, other parts of the American soul revealed themselves — the heroic responses of the first responders, and a city and nation of people taking care of each other. As ordinary citizens gave their lives for strangers, they became our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. In the days that followed the 9/11 attacks, the stories of pain, loss, and self-sacrifice brought Joy and me to tears several times. The suffering of many led to the service of many more.

For a moment, the world’s last remaining superpower was vulnerable, and we all felt it. In Washington, people fled from downtown D.C., walking and running right past our house, and gathered to pray at places such as Sojourners’ office. Joy helped Luke set up a little water station, as people frantically rushed by our house.

In our sudden sense of vulnerability we were now, and perhaps for the first time, like most of the world, where vulnerability is an accepted part of being human. And in those first days following 9/11, America, not the terrorists, had the high ground. The world did not identify with those who cruelly and murderously decided to take innocent lives in response to their grievances — both real and imagined. Instead, the world identified with a suffering America — even the front cover of the French newspaper Le Monde ran the headline, “We are all Americans now.”

But it was Washington’s response that I was most worried about. Within a short period of time, the official reaction to terrorism would simply be defined as war — a decade of it — resulting in many more innocent casualties than on September 11, 2001. In response to America’s own suffering, many others in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world would now suffer — all in the name of our war on terrorism. The opportunity for deeper understanding, reflection, and redirection would elude us as we sought to erase our vulnerability with the need to demonstrate our superior force and power. This was done quite easily in the early days of both our new wars. But now, we see that the longest series of wars in American history has failed to resolve or reverse the causes of the violence that struck us, or to make us safer. They just made it all worse.

The world expected and would have supported a focused and sustained effort to pursue and bring this small band of criminals to justice. But these last 10 years of manipulated and corrupted intelligence, endless war, practices and policies of torture, secret armies of assassination, global violations of human rights, indiscriminate violence with countless civilian casualties, and trillions of dollars wasted caused America to lose the high ground long ago. The arrogance of American power was our only response to the both the brutality and complexity of terrorism. Perhaps, this arrogance is most recently and brazenly exhibited in former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s new book tour, where he boasts of having absolutely no regrets for any of the momentous decisions he took part in. These are decisions which have made the world an even more divided, polarized, dehumanized, and dangerous place — 10 years after September 11, 2001.

But, fortunately, the official and failed response of Washington to the terrible tragedy of 9/11 has not been the only reponse. A new generation of Christians has asked how Jesus would respond to these same events. Many of them would agree with what Methodist Bishop Will Willimon recently said in the evangelical magazine Christianity Today: “American Christians may look back upon our response to 9/11 as our greatest Christological defeat … when our people felt vulnerable, they reached for the flag instead of the cross.” As many of those who have grown up in the decade since 9/11 confront the conflicts of their world, they are reaching for different things than their government. They are forging alternative responses to issues of injustice and violence, and rejecting the terrorism and war sequence of Washington’s twisted and failed moral logic.

And despite the hateful diatribes of fundamentalist leaders in all our religious traditions, other pastors have decided to love their neighbors, and even their enemies in response to Jesus’ call. Their stories are slowly being told, from American neighborhoods where Muslims have moved in, to conflict areas around the world where faith is being used for bridge building and healing, instead of more revenge killings. Christian leaders are sharing meals, fasting, and prayer with Muslim leaders. Some have defended each other’s congregations and homes in the face of heated threats and rhetoric. While differences between faith traditions are not being glossed over, the nature of a loving and reconciling God is being courageously affirmed across religious lines. In all of this, we are saying that government responses need not define our own…

Art, Christian Witness, Perspective, PNCC, Political, , , , , , , ,

Art and thoughts for Labor Day

At Dawn. Going to Work, Czesław Wasilewski, ca. 1930

The history and tradition of the Polish National Catholic Church’s is the life and history of its people and their relationship with their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The documents, hymns, and writings of the Church, and its civic action all reference its relationship with Labor. That relationship was founded so that the struggles of its members would not go unheeded, but rather to support them in prevailing in their fight for freedom, recognition, fair treatment and wages as workers, and their dignity as citizens and Christians.

These references include, from the Hymn of the Polish National Catholic Church:

Now again He comes from heaven,
Midst the lab’ring, toiling people,
In the form of Bread and God’s Word,
To His humble, needful people.
To His humble, needful people.

From the Hymn of Faith:

To Thee we come, O Lord our God,
Before Thine altar Father,
Thou knowest best our yearning hearts,
This supplication answer.
Lift up from want thy people, Lord.
Bless us O God, O Father bless our toil.

Under Thy Cross we stand prepared,
To serve Thee with devotion,
Be it with sweat of blood or tears,
Or humble resignation.
For we Thy people are, O Lord,
Save us O God, O Father bless our toil.

The Church, addressing criticism of Bishop Hodur’s support for workers and their efforts. Some saw a necessity for removing religion from the workers movement. From Straz (21 January 1910):

As it was in 1897, so it is today in the year 1910, that Bishop Hodur is a supporter of reform in the civil or the social spirit, he is for the nationalization of the land, of churches, schools, factories, mines and the means of production. He has stated this openly and states it publicly today, he does not hide his sympathies for the workers’ movement and he will never hide them, and he considers himself nothing else than a worker in God’s Church.

But the bishop is an opponent of erasing religion from the cultural work of humanity — indeed, Bishop Hodur believes strongly and is convinced that all progress, growth, just and harmonious shaping of human relations must come from a religious foundation, lean on Divine ethics, and then such growth will be permanent and will give humanity happiness.

Bishop Hodur stood with strikers and those in the Labor movement. He participated in strikes and supported striking workers, and called the PNCC together to respond to the Lattimer Massacre. The following is from a November 30, 1919 speech at a reception for delegate Maciej Łacszczyński, editor of a labor newspaper in Poland and a delegate to the International Conference of Workers held in Washington. The address was attended by members of congress and John T. Dempsey, President of the United Mine Workers Union:

One of the greatest achievements of modern civilization is respect and honor for human labor. ln the past, labor was undervalued, work was shameful, and what goes with that, working people were mistreated and abused. There was kowtowing and bowing before those who did not need to work hard, and those who did work hard and with their toil created wealth and fed others were regarded as half-free or slaves. Even the greatest of the ancient thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle regarded this economic system as just and the only one recommended, in which a minority rules and possesses full rights of citizenship and the majority works and produces. This majority of people had no rights, it was not free. And such a system lasted whole ages.

Truly Jesus Christ came on earth as the greatest teacher of humankind, the spiritual regenerator, and he condemned a social order based on cruelty and injustice, and His immediate disciples tried to create a new order, the Kingdom of God on earth, but the exponents of force and exploitation soon managed to gain for themselves the leaders of the Christian Church and impose on them their points of view. And the entire Middle Ages, that is, for about a thousand years more, this unjust system was tolerated, this order in which two castes, that is, the magnates, nobles and clergy, possessed rights and privileges; townspeople had limited rights, but the great masses of peasants and laborers were without rights, without influence whatsoever. It was not even permitted to change one’s lord. One was tied to the field or to the workplace like some kind of thing without a soul.

Not until the beginning of the nineteenth century were the commandments of Christ the Lord remembered, His teaching about the worthiness and value of labor. But it was not the priests, not the bishops, not the pope – these representatives of the Christian Church – who recalled this splendid teaching of Christ about the value of the human soul and labor, but lay people, first in England, then in France. It began to be taught that work is the foundation of the social structure, that work is the source of wealth, prosperity and happiness, and what goes with this, that it is not the nobility, not the magnates, not those presently ruling who should be the ruling class, but if there is to be a ruling class then it should be the working class.

And from that time, that is, more or less from the middle of the last century, begins the organization of workers on a larger scale in the name of the rights of man, in the name of the value and worthiness of labor. Everything that workers did in the name of their slogans was good.

And today one may say boldly that the cause of labor is the most important one, and that progress, the development and happiness of the whole nation, of all mankind, depends on its just resolution. Workers today have more privileges than they have ever had.

In this reasonable and just struggle for rights, bread for the family and education for children, for common control of the wealth created by the worker, our holy Church stands before the worker like a pillar of fire, and the hand of Christ blesses him in his work.

Art, Poetry, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , ,

Art for September 1st

IX.1939 - Polish History, Kasper Pochwalski, 1964

Seventy-one years ago, on September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. In those first days and the six years that followed, more than five million Poles died.

Resources and reflections on Poland and the start of World War II:

John Guzlowski’s poem: Landscape with Dead Horses wherein he seeks to capture and describe the feelings of his parents and the Poles of their generation.

A poem: I Sing the Song of Maczkowce, by Martin Stepek commemorating his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and all Poles from the pre-war eastern border area who were forcible resettled in labour camps in Siberia by the Soviet Red Army in 1940 and 1941.

New Duns exhibition will focus on moving story of Polish troops: ‘For Our Freedom and Yours’ – the story of the 1st Polish armored division at the Duns library. The exhibit traces the story of the famous Polish armoured division, from their formation in Duns in 1942 to their campaigns in western Europe in 1944-1945 under the command of the esteemed General Stanislaw Maczek. Admission to the exhibition in Duns Library Exhibition Room is free from August 13th to September 24th.

The Doomed Soldiers – Polish Underground Soldiers 1944-1963 – The Untold Story: The story behind the underground armies resisting Nazi German and Russian Communist occupiers as well as collaborators.

Ułani, ułani – Archival information on the Polish Calvary and resistance during the first days of the war. Abandoned by allies, and attacked from behind by the Red Army, the documentary includes interviews with surviving cavalry from the September campaign, statements from Nazi German leaders, and the fate of the Polish cavalry after surrender.

Night Of Flames – A historical novel and winner of the 2007 “Outstanding Achievemnet Award” from the Wisconsin Library Association. The story follows Polish cavalry officer, Jan Kopernik, and his wife, Anna, through five years of war and the underground resistance in their courageous quest for freedom.

[AMAZONPRODUCT= 1590131665]

The Katyn Order, the acclaimed historical novel/thriller set in World War II surrounding one of history’s most heinous war crimes.

[AMAZONPRODUCT= 1590135725]

M.B.B. Biskupski’s Hollywood’s War with Poland: 1939-1945. Danuta Goska reviews the book at Writing the Polish Diaspora and states:

[The book] is a must-buy, must-read and must-keep book for several audiences. Twenty-first century American citizens seeking insight into ethnic jockeying for power will want to read this book. Conspiracy theorists fascinated by the ability of popular culture to twist human minds will find support for their most Orwellian nightmares. Polish Americans who care about the abysmal position of Polonia in the arts, politics, journalism and academia will buy, read, and reread it. Biskupski’s style is straightforward, without academic or aesthetic flourishes. The average reader will have no problem.

Hollywood’s War with Poland is an essential resource that proves, beyond any question, that powerful people, prompted by geopolitical competition and deep hostility worked hard to sully the image of Poles, Polish-Americans, and Poland. They did this during World War II, when Poland was playing a key historical role. World War II began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland…

[AMAZONPRODUCT= 0813125596]

Art, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , ,

Art for August 31st

Workers 1980, Andrzej Pagowski

From Polskie Radio: Landmark Solidarity ‘August Agreement’ remembered

Today marks the anniversary of the famed August Agreement, signed 31 years ago on 31 August 1980 – an event that marked the beginning of the end for communism in Poland.

Also known as the Gdansk Agreement, the breakthrough followed strikes at the fabled shipyards in the northern Polish city, with former employee Lech Walesa at the helm.

By 24 April 1980, the communist government estimated that some 130,000 employees from 140 companies in Gdansk and neighbouring Gdynia had joined the strike. The nearby port city of Gdynia followed suit, with approximately 60,000 not turning up for work.

The authorities were compelled to act. As it happened, Poland’s communist leader Edward Gierek called for a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Negotiations ensued between the so-called Interfactory Strike Committee (MKS) and the government. Talks touched on such key themes as censorship restrictions, the release of political prisoners and the allowing of the Church to participate in radio and television programmes.

The first point in the famed 21-demands struck a decisive blow:

“Acceptance of free trade unions that are independent of the party, and of enterprises, in accordance with convention No. 87 of the International Labor Organization concerning the right to form free trade unions.”

The agreement caused a brief eruption of freedom of expression in Poland, before the clampdown of December 1981, when a state of martial law was declared.
Nevertheless, the regime eventually fell due to efforts of Solidarity campaigners, culminating in the Round Table Agreement of spring 1989.

The Poster Art above is for the documentary Robotnicy ’80. In this clip from the movie you hear Lech Wałęsa say: Mamy prawo do strajku! (We have the right to strike!)

Art, Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

Art for August 1st

Year 1944 - St. Alexander's Church in Warsaw, Wawrzyniec Chorembalski, Warsaw 1944

From Wikipedia: The church was destroyed during World War II, in the course of the Warsaw Uprising. During the aerial bombardment by German Luftwaffe in the first days of September 1944, the church was hit by 9 bombs resulting in collapse of the dome, main nave and one of the towers. In the years after the war it stood as a ruin while debates were conducted over whether to rebuild it to its pre-war appearance, or to its original appearance before reconstruction. In the end, the church was rebuilt between 1949 and 1952 in a form similar to its original design.

Poetry, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , , , , ,

On-line magazines and news sites

The July-August issue of the Polish language magazine Polski Partner is available for free, on-line. Click on the “Free Online” button in the upper right hand corner of their website. Archive issues are also available. The magazine covers news from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, and features articles on everything from fitness to history to cooking. Enjoy!

Cogo News is a new online news and commentary service covering Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in the English language. Cogo provides short, succinct articles reviewing the key editorial, commentary and opinion pieces in major regional news outlets. Beyond news coverage, Cogo encourages dialogue and creative writing in and about CEE. Cogo encourages contributions of articles, analyses, short stories, photos, poems, comments, and essays.

See the Cogo article Fry reads Miłosz

Stephen Fry narrates a free new audiobook celebrating the extraordinary work of the legendary Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. Available with the Times Literary Supplement on 12th August 2011, and free streaming available online here and here.

Celebrating the life and works of one of Poland’s foremost literary icons, Stephen Fry narrates a new audiobook of selected poems by Miłosz, marking the centenary of his birth.

Stephen Fry commented on his involvement in the project: “It gave me enormous pleasure to read these poems, which I count as amongst the best written in any language since the war. It would give me even more pleasure if I thought that this recording might bring Miłosz and his dazzling mixture of honesty, insight and pure poetic instinct to a wider, English-speaking readership…”

Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

Remembering 1 August 1944

Today marks the 67th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. The on-line Polonia community has commemorated the day in many ways. I begin with John Guzlowski’s poetry from The Warsaw Uprising, August 1, 1944

On August 1, 1944, the Polish resistance and the people of Warsaw rose up to throw off the Nazi oppressors. The Poles fought with guns, bricks, stolen grenades, sticks, and their hands and teeth. The Nazis retaliated with tanks, bombers, and fire.

63 days later the last Poles surrendered to the Germans.

250,000 men, women, and children were killed in the fighting, and the city of Warsaw was leveled by the Germans.

As a boy growing up, I would often hear my father talk about the fight the Poles made in the face of German military superiority. He would talk and sometimes he would weep for the dead.

My father wasn’t there, of course. He had been taken by the Germans to Buchenwald Concentration Camp several years before. But when he talked about the Warsaw Uprising, he spoke like a man who had been touched by something that he would never forget.

I tried to capture this in a poem called “Cross of Polish Wood…”

A historical timeline for the Warsaw Uprising can be found at the Warsaw Uprising 1944 website. And, remember to support Wisia’s Story, and projects like it, so to preserve first hand accounts of these events.

The History Channel aired Betrayal: The Battle for Warsaw in 2009. The film’s description is a fitting synopsis of the events that began this day:

The Warsaw Uprising was the largest and perhaps most heroic underground campaign of World War II. It was also one of the most desperate and little known battles of the war. Yet even as the Poles rose up against the Germans in the heart of Warsaw, they were callously betrayed. Not by their enemies but by their allies.

They were promised help that never came, so they took matters into their own hands. In the summer of 1944, more than 20,000 Polish Freedom Fighters and 220,000 Polish civilians died at the hands of the German Army during 63 days of hellacious battle in Poland’s capital city of Warsaw.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s Nazi forces invaded Poland from the West, and two weeks later, Russia invaded from the east. There they formed a resistance movement with the hope of eventually overthrowing German occupation in their homeland and re-gaining freedom. Polish soldiers, who had escaped, joined Allied forces around the world to battle the Axis, while in German-occupied Warsaw, the Polish underground published newspapers; plastered the city with fliers urging resistance; bombed supply trains; assassinated German officials in public; and gathered a force of 400,000 known as The Home Army.

The Germans responded with the brutality that was their trademark, setting up gallows around the city for public executions, rounding up suspected sympathizers and herding them onto trains bound for work camps and gas chambers.

By 1944, the Russians had switched sides and were allied to Britain and America. And as the Russians pushed the Germans out of Russian territory and back through Poland, the Polish underground prepared to rise up against the Germans in Warsaw. The plan was to liberate their capital just before the Russians reached Warsaw and liberate the city.

But to prevail the Poles would have to join forces with Joseph Stalin, the same man whose forces had massacred 22,000 Polish soldiers and buried them in mass graves only a few years earlier. On August 1, 1944 at 5 p.m., with the Russian army just miles away, The Home Army launched a surprise attack against the Germans … the Warsaw Uprising was underway. Yet, just when the Poles expected the Russians to join the battle, the Russians stopped as the Germans in Warsaw decimated the Polish insurgents. There was a reason: Stalin had no use for the insurgents; his plan was to install a communist puppet government in Poland after the war. Yet perhaps the most appalling aspect of the story is that Churchill and Roosevelt let Stalin get away with it.

Consisting entirely of archival footage and interviews with survivors, BETRAYAL: THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW is an inspiring and heartbreaking retrospective of one of the greatest fights you’ve probably never heard about. Highlights of BETRAYAL: THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW include:

  • The little-known Polish perspective on the latter years of World War II, when the under equipped Home Army struggled against superior German forces and waited for help from Allied forces that never seemed to come.
  • The historic summit in Tehran, in which Churchill and Roosevelt each separately promised Stalin that Poland would be his once Germany fell, paving the way for a half-century of Communist rule there after the War.
  • Tales of the heroic efforts of the Polish insurgents, including carrying the wounded to safety through the city sewers, the special efforts of the women of Poland both on the battlefield and as nurses in makeshift hospitals, and the efforts to find food and water in the war-torn streets of Warsaw.
  • Survivors share memories of German brutality, including pouring gasoline on living people and lighting them on fire. “These were not soldiers,” one survivor recalls, “They were rapists and murderers.”
  • The horribly botched efforts at support by the Russian and American Armed forces, which included supplying the Polish with thirty-year-old rifles that didn’t work and dropping relief supplies directly into the hands of the Germans.
  • The eventual surrender of The Home Army to German forces, after which Hitler placed the entire remaining population in concentration camps and leveled the city, building by building.

From YouTube and The Wall Speaks: Krystyna Rutczyńska, a courier for the AK (Home Army) speaks about her experience during the first day of the Warsaw Uprising. / Krystyna Rutczyńska, łączniczka AK w Powstaniu Warzawskim opowiada o przeżyciach pierwszego dnia Powstania Warszawskiego.

From Polskie Radio on commemorations in Poland: Warsaw Rising remembered

Ceremonies marking the 67th anniversary of the Warsaw Rising of Polish Home Army partisans against occupying Nazi German forces have begun in the Żolibórz district of the capital, where the Uprising began in the early afternoon hours on 1 August 1944.

Memorial events are also planned for tomorrow and Sunday, when President Bronislaw Komorowski will host a meeting with former insurgents who are arriving to Warsaw for the occasion from various parts of the world.

On Monday, the anniversary itself, in line with a long-standing tradition, sirens will wail across the city, buses and private cars will draw to a halt and pedestrians will stand still for a minute’s silence on the stroke of 5 pm, the exact time chosen by the Home Army to launch the uprising. The main ceremony, attended by top-ranking politicians, will be held hour at the Powązki Military Cemetery.

Special concerts, theatre performances, city games and sing-a-longs are also planned.

Fought in a bid to secure Poland’s post-war independence, the Warsaw Uprising was led by the Home Army – commanded by Poland’s government-in-exile in London – which secretly deployed around 50,000 fighters. Around 18,000 of them died in the sixty-three day-long battle.

Some 180,000 civilians were massacred, or killed by crossfire or bombing, as the Germans took Warsaw back street by street.

And: President Komorowski gives thanks to Warsaw Rising insurgents

President Komorowski with veteran Helena Wołłowicz; photo - PAP Bartłomiej Zborowski

President Komorowski was with his aunt and veteran of the 1944 Warsaw Rising Helena Wołłowicz today, to mark the 67th anniversary of the insurgency against Nazi occupation, which began on 1 August 1944.

Bronislaw Komorowski was at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw as part of a day of ceremonies and events to mark the uprising, which was eventually crushed by the Nazis.

Later, President Komorowski led a ceremony at the Warsaw Rising monument outside the parliament building in honour of those fallen 67 years ago.

President Komorowski told the dignitaries and veterans that Poland’s wartime underground state could be an example for his countrymen today.

Komorowski declared that theclandestine state, which included underground courts, universities, theatres and publishing houses, “was a phenomenon then, and today it can also be a source of pride and an important point of reference for contemporary Poles in thinking about their country.”
Komorowski alluded to the parallels between the wartime generation and his own, in their desire for “the reconstruction of the Polish state”.

“So today, here in this place, where the monument to the Polish underground state stands… the Polish president bows his head low, not only before those who created this state, but also before those who fought for this country, and to those who are able to respect the Polish state,” the head of state said.

From YouTube: The Nazis – A Warning From History, The Wild East (Episode 4, Parts 1-4) discussing the Nazi German policies toward Poland during World War II.

Christian Witness, PNCC, , ,

Holy Trinity of Kewanee, Illinois raises high the cross

From the Star Courier: Renovation under way at Holy Trinity Church

It was 1928 when the local paper published news that Polish immigrants would build a new church in Kewanee. The church was completed during that year and the first Mass was celebrated as the Christmas Eve Shepherds Mass in 1928.

For over 83 years, the Holy Trinity Church steeple has contributed to Kewanee’s landscape. But like any old building, this one also needs constant maintenance and care. The wooden cross on the top of the steeple, once heavy and strong, had lost its good appearance. The roof and the walls started deteriorating.

A few years ago the heating and cooling system were upgraded. There is now air-conditioning in the church and downstairs in the church hall. With the updated heating system, there was no longer a need for the chimney on the east side of the church building.

The Parish Committee, pastor and all members of the congregation decided to give the church back its beautiful look. The renovation will be expensive and will last all summer, but the final result will be great.

Parish Committee Chairman David Draminski said, “Our plan is to make the church up-to-date and more inviting, but to keep it traditional.” Holy Trinity Parish members understand that it is worth every effort to keep the church in good condition.

Holy Trinity Polish National Catholic Church is a big part of Kewanee history and close to the hearts of many Kewaneeans. Not only members, but many of our friends like to come and taste our delicious Polish food — Polish sausage, pierogies, sauerkraut — at our St. Joseph’s Supper in March, Easter Brunch, The More on 34 Polish food sale, our Fourth of July food stand at Francis Park, and our Polish Sausage Supper in October and the Polish food sale in December.

The work will be completed by Summy Construction, 703 N Main St, Kewanee, IL. Telephone: 309-853-9966. The renovation is not expected to disrupt worship services held on Sundays at 9 a.m. Neighbors are asked to forgive any inconvenience related to the construction.

To follow up the progress of renovation drive by the church at 716 N. Tremont St., Kewanee or visit the Parish website and photo gallery.

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