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On Veteran’s Day

For my dad, grandfather, and all our Veterans. May their service and sacrifice be honored.

My dad, Louis T. Konicki at Mainz-Bischofshein - part of the post WWII occupying forces

Our veterans are now returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, and of course are greeted with initial joy. Then they face the search for work and the struggle with the horrors they have faced. They face a lack of adequate physical and mental health care. As to jobs, what are our veterans finding? An extraordinarily difficult job market with an unemployment rate for combat-age veterans at 17.5% in New York State, 13.3% nationally.

Dr. John Guzlowski reflects in November 11, 1918–The Day World War I Ended

I first heard of World War I when we came to America as Displaced Persons in 1951. We were refugees after World War II, and we moved into a basement apartment on Hamilton Street in Chicago.

Our landlord was a veteran of the First World War. He was a Polish American named Ponchek. He was also a drunk, but that wasn’t anything special. There were a lot of drunks around. What made Ponchek special was that he had a steel plate in his head. As a kid and a recent immigrant to America, he had been drafted and sent to France to stop the Germans who were trying to rip France apart and shove it into the Atlantic. He ended up in the trenches in France in late October fighting the Germans, and a bullet took off the top of his head. The doctors cut away what bone they could, cleaned out the wound, and screwed a steel plate into the skull bone.

This fascinated me when I was a kid. I wondered about that plate, and what it felt like. Did Ponchek always feel a weight pressing down on his head? Was it like wearing a steel hat? A steel helmet? And I wondered what they covered the plate with. Skin? And where did it come from? Was it his skin or someone else’s? I never could ask.

Like a lot of the veterans I knew, he was frightening. He wasn’t a guy you wanted to spend a lot of time talking to.

Veterans were men who limped. They dragged their legs behind them like Lon Chaney in the Mummy movie. They were men who had wooden legs that creaked when they walked past you and the other kids sitting on the stoop. These veterans had no arms or only one arm, or were missing fingers or hands, or ears.

My dad, a guy who lost his left eye when he was clubbed by a Nazi guard in a concentration camp, used to go to a bar where the owner had a black, shiny rubber hand. He lost his real hand during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 when he shoved a homemade grenade into the steel treads of a German tank. The black rubber hand was like some kind of weird toy. Sometimes, it looked like a black fist, sometimes it looked like an eight ball.

Sometimes, a vet without arms or legs sat on the sidewalk in front of this bar. He had a cloth hat in front of him, and he was selling pencils. He’d sit there smiling, making chit chat with the guys walking in and out of the bar. You’d toss him a nickel, and you could take a pencil, but most guys didn’t. Who needs a pencil?…

A musical reflection – “Sargent Mackenzie”

Original Scottish Version

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun
Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid

Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Ains a year say a prayer faur me
Close yir een an remember me

Nair mair shall a see the sun
For a fell tae a Germans gun

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

English Translation

Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone
Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone

When they come I will stand my ground
Stand my ground I’ll not be afraid

Thoughts of home take away my fear
Sweat and blood hide my veil of tears

Once a year say a prayer for me
Close your eyes and remember me

Never more shall I see the sun
For I fell to a Germans gun

Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone
Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone

Where before many more have gone.

Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , , ,

Poland’s Emigration Museum and the story of immigration

Maritime Station at 1 Polska Street in Gdynia was a port building commissioned in 1933. It served passenger traffic, including thousands of emigres who left Poland to resettle in distant lands. Because of the building’s strong relationship to the history of emigration, and its location at the hub of emigration routes, the building has been revitalized and now houses the Emigration Museum.

The Museum is seeking input for its Portrait Of An Emigrant Collection. This Collection of emigration stories will assist in recreating the history of Polish emigration through family albums, memoirs, and diaries. The collection seeks: Stories of emigrants; Recollections of departures, homesickness, home, family, and work; News of the new world, new people, new habits, and new motherlands; Reports of family life, children, education, learning a foreign language, us and them; Photos of farewells in the old country; Family stories about those who left and those who stayed; and The tales of relatives, acquaintances, and old friends.

Each of these is a start of a new history; the stories and illustrations that make up the collective portrait of the emigration epic. This history composed of individual fate –- ordinary, stormy, and sometimes dramatic is compelling. The Museum is compiling the collection of emigration from the stories of individuals and their archival photos.

Contact the Museum or Mr. Aleksander Gosk by E-mail for more information.

Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , ,

Traveling photographic exhibition, “Katyn: Massacre, Politics, Morality”

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) Golda Meir Library is hosting the traveling photographic exhibition, “Katyn: Massacre, Politics, Morality,” from November 7-27 in the 1st floor east wing of the Library.

The exhibit recounts the execution of 21,857 Polish troops and civilians in the Katyn Forest by the Soviet KGB during World War II, and the decades-long suppression of the truth about the atrocity.

Created by Poland’s Council for the Protection of the Memory of Struggle and Martyrdom, the exhibit debuted last May in the Rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington D.C. and has traveled to the Hoover Institute at Stanford University and the Buffalo NY Public Library.

In conduction with the exhibit, the UWM Libraries will host a panel discussion, “The Katyn Forest Massacre: The Crime, the Coverup, the Historical Legacy,” on Wednesday, November 9 at 7 p.m. in the fourth floor Conference Center of the Golda Meir Library, 2311 E. Hartford Ave.

Participants are Douglas W. Jacobson, author of The Katyn Order: A Novel; Michael Mikos, Professor, UWM Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literature; Neal Pease, Professor, UWM Dept. of History; and Donald Pienkos, Professor Emeritus, UWM Dept. of Political Science.

The panel discussion and the exhibit are free and open to the public. For more information or special needs, call 414-229-6202.

Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , ,

Film: Remembrance

From J: Wartime love, escape propel immersive ‘Remembrance’

To those who swore they’d seen enough Holocaust-themed films to last a lifetime: Rescind your vow, just this once.

The German drama “Remembrance” (“Die Verlerone Zeit”) is that good. It’s better than good, in fact. It’s unforgettable.

Anna Justice’s fact-based saga relates a tale of escape from war-torn Poland nearly as incredible as Agnieszka Holland’s jaw-dropping “Europa Europa” did two decades ago. At the same time, “Remembrance” cuts between the past and the present (circa 1976) with far greater emotional force than the recent “Sarah’s Key” mustered.

The generator of all that power is a pressure-cooker love affair portrayed with such urgency, immediacy and intensity that it makes every screen romance you’ve seen in the last 10 years look like a foolish game of charades.

In other words, “Remembrance” is the whole package. This is the rare film that’s epic in scale and reach, yet effortlessly capable of touching every viewer.

“Remembrance” receives its North American premiere Tuesday, Oct. 25 in the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival at the Castro Theatre, in a co-presentation with the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and the honorary consul of Poland. The film is preceded by Werner Biedermann’s seven-minute short “Laula,” an artful ode to his relatives who perished in the Holocaust.

“Remembrance” begins in a gray concentration camp in Poland in 1944, where German Jew Hannah Silberstein (Alice Dwyer) scrubs floors in the bakery and tries to be invisible. That’s the best survival strategy, she’s learned, and her mastery of it is a big reason she makes it through the war.

I’m not giving anything away, for we’re immediately, and jarringly, shown her comfortable life in Brooklyn. Now Hannah Levine (Dagmar Manzel), she’s picking up a tablecloth from her neighborhood cleaners for a party that night when she’s stunned to overhear a television interview with a middle-age Polish ex-partisan.

Her world thrown off its axis, Hannah spends the evening ricocheting between frantic action and distracted reverie, to her husband’s puzzlement and frustration.

Tomasz Limanowski, the gentle non-Jew Hannah glimpsed on TV, is the other reason she’s alive. He was a fellow prisoner and they were secret lovers — which may sound impossible but is presented in an utterly convincing manner. (Bribery, along with Nazi efficiency and fear, kept the camps running, apparently.)

A plan has been concocted to spring Tomasz from the camp with a roll of film exposing Nazi abuses. In an impulsive and breathtaking act of courage and devotion, he takes Hannah with him…

Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , , , ,

Polish Film Festival ’11

Come see the latest award-winning Polish films and meet some of the people who made them at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York.

All films screened at the Canisius College, Montante Cultural Center, 2011 Main St, Buffalo. “IRENA SENDLER: “In the Name of Their Mothers” will be shown in the Student Center on Hughes St. (off Main). All films have English subtitles and are subject to change. Admission is $5. Tickets available at the door. Admission to “IRENA SENDLER: “In the Name of Their Mothers” is free.

For more details on the films, please visit the Permanent Chair of Polish Culture’s events page.

Polish Film Festival 2011 at Canisius College, Buffalo, NYMonday, November 7
7:00 IRENA SENDLER: “In the Name of Their Mothers” The latest documentary about the Polish Catholic women who saved Jewish children during WWII.
MEET THE DIRECTOR: Mary Skinner
Co-Sponsored with The Polish Legacy Project-WWII
Screened in the Student Center, Hughes St.

Thursday, November 10
7:00 WYGRANY – “The Winner” (Drama, 2011) The story of a young pianist. After losing everything, an accidental meeting with his former math teacher and avid horsetrack gambler helps him find his way in life. Dir. Wiesław Saniewski

Friday, November 11
7:00 ŚLUBY PANIENSKIE – “Maiden Vows” (Comedy, 2010)
Film adaptation of the early 19th century comedic play by Aleksander Fredro, still popular in Polish theatres.
Dir. Filip Bajon

Saturday, November 12
7:00 CZARNY CZWARTEK – “Black Thursday” (Drama, 2010) This film is dedicated to the workers’ strikes that swept over Polish coastal cities in December of 1970, only to be brutally crushed by communist authorities. The film focuses on the story of the family of one of the Gdynia shipyard workers.
Dir. Antoni Krauze

Sunday, November 13
3:00 MEET THE PRODUCER of LABYRINTH Fr. Ron Schmidt, S.J.

3:30 LABYRINTH (Documentary, 2010)
Memory, art and hell collide as an Auschwitz survivor finally confronts the horrors of his past after 50 years of silence. Unable to speak after a stroke, he draws the scenes he witnessed as one of the first prisoners of the camp.

4:00 JOANNA (Drama, 2010). WWII under Nazi rule. Gripping story about Joanna, a Polish woman to whom fate presents a split-second choice: whether to hide a young Jewish girl she finds sleeping in a church.
MEET THE DIRECTOR: Feliks Falk

Sunday’s events co-sponsored by: The Joseph J. Naples Conversations in Christ and Culture Lecture and Performance Series and The Polish Legacy Project-WWII

Free Parking across Main Street, Lyons Parking Lots #1, 2, and 4. For information contact the Canisius College Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at 716-888-2835.

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

Miłosz events

California Experiences to be Discussed at Yale
By Raymond Rolak

New York — A celebration and conference will be at the Czeslaw Milosz archive at the Bienecke Library on the Yale campus November 4-5, in New Haven, CT. An exhibition will be on display thru December 17, 2011, titled Exile as Destiny: Czesław Miłosz and America. The manuscripts, documents, and photographs on display are lesser-known aspects of Milosz’s relationship with America. What will be especially analyzed will be the multifaceted relationships with his adopted home in California and fellow émigré authors. How he embraced and distained his translations with the English language will also be discussed.

An academic poetry conference at Claremont McKenna College in Los Angeles regarding the celebrated author just concluded.

Centennial and Poetry of Milosz Featured in N.Y.

An evening of remembrance and poetry will be held at Columbia University on Saturday, October 27, 2011 at 5:30 pm., in the Butler Library. It will be a celebration of the memorabilia and poems of Czeslaw Milosz.

He died in 2004 at the age of 93 and had previously been a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California-Berkley from 1961 to 1998.

Milosz gained recognition for his poetry when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980. There will also be an exhibition of artifacts and letters opening at the Butler Library.

Controversy always followed him. He refused to categorically identify himself as either a Pole or a Lithuanian. He defected to France in 1951 and immigrated to the United States in 1960.

A collection of his essays published as “To Begin Where I Am” and “The Captive Mind” in 1953 brought him great notoriety. The author will be honored with comments by Professor Helen Vendler of Harvard University. The event will coincide with other multilingual readings of his poetry by members of the Colombia University community. Also featured will be Colombia’s Alan Timberlake and Dr. Anna Frajlich, who will both do readings.

Readings Also in San Francisco

In California, another celebration will be hosted by the Polish Arts and Culture Foundation of San Francisco when they present A Celebration of Milosz on Saturday October 29, at 2:00 PM. at the Main Library’s Koret Auditorium. A panel of literary notables, friends and family will read some of his works representing his European experiences and influences.

Miłosz at Central Connecticut State University

A Miłosz event at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU): “Czesław Miłosz: A Poet of Both Nations.” Yale professor Tomas Venclova will present on Wednesday, November 9th at 7pm in Founders Hall, Davidson Bldg, CCSU, New Britain CT. Professor Venclova is one of the outstanding scholars of Slavic Studies in the world. He was a friend of Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. Professor Venclova is an author of collections of poems, poetry-translations, essays, articles. His poetry has appeared in many languages. He is a recipient of numerous international poetry prizes including Valencia (Slovenia, 1990) and Qinghai (China, 2011), as well as of the Lithuanian National Prize (2000). The event is free and open to the public. Parking is available in campus garages. For more information, please contact the CCSU Polish Studies Department at 860-832-3010, or via E-mail.

The S. A. Blejwas Endowed Chair of Polish and Polish American Studies at CCSU will also be presenting “The Magic Mountain: an American portrait of Czesław Miłosz” on Sunday, November 13th at 4pm in the CCSU Vance Academic Center, Room 105. Celebrating 100th anniversary of Czesław Milosz’s birth, Polish Studies Program presents a documentary about American years in the life of Polish poet and 1980 Nobel Prize winner. Milosz’s own reminiscences and remarks by his friends and students, some of them the most prominent 20th century American intellectuals, complete the portrait of nearly 40 years the poet spent in Berkley, California. This event is also free and the public is cordially invited. For more information, please contact the CCSU Polish Studies Department at 860-832-3010, or via E-mail.

Poland - Polish - Polonia,

Ś+P Brig. Gen. Tadeusz Sawicz

From CTV: Poland’s last Battle of Britain pilot dies in Toronto

WARSAW, Poland — A Polish World War II airman, believed to be the last surviving Polish pilot from the Battle of Britain, has died at the age of 97 in a Canadian nursing home.

Turner and Porter Funeral Directors said on its website that Brig. Gen. Tadeusz Sawicz died Oct. 19 at a nursing home in Toronto, Canada.

Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza daily reported Wednesday that Sawicz was the last surviving pilot from the Polish Air Forces in Britain during World War II. He fought in the 1940 battle and served with the air force until early 1947.

A spokesman for Britain’s Royal Air Force said the RAF was saddened to hear of Sawicz’ death.

“There is widespread admiration for the major contribution that the Polish aircrew made to the Allied victory in World War II and their commitment in the face of significant losses, especially those who so bravely fought in the Battle of Britain. Their vital contributions will be long remembered,” he said.

The spokesman declined to be named, in keeping with military policy.

Historian Adam Zamoyski — author of “The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in the Second World War” — told The Associated Press that if Sawicz was the last surviving pilot from the 1940 battle it would close an important chapter in the war’s and Poland’s history.

He added that proving he is the last could be difficult, as there is no exact record of the pilots, who emigrated around the world after the war. Sawicz moved to Canada in 1957 where he worked in aviation.

At the start of World War II in 1939, Sawicz fought in Poland’s air defence against the invading German Nazis. At one point, he flew under German fire to carry orders to troops defending Warsaw.

Following the collapse of the city’s defence on Sept. 17, he joined Polish pilots fighting in France, but after Paris’ surrender in July he made his way — with tens of thousands of Polish airmen, soldiers and sailors — to Britain, making up the largest foreign military force in the country. Zamoyski said that some 17,000 Poles — pilots, mechanics and ground staff — served in the Polish air force in Britain at the time.

In the summer of 1940, Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski — the head of Poland’s Government in Exile in London — signed an agreement with the British Government to form a Polish Air Force in Britain, of which Sawicz was to play his part.

After training on Hurricane fighter aircraft, he was incorporated into RAF Polish squadron 303 and later to squadrons 316 and 315. On and off, he served as a commander of the Polish wing.

Sawicz was among the 145 Polish pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain, 31 of which died in action. Other foreign pilots — from New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Czechoslovakia, South Africa, the United States and Ireland — also flew with the RAF.

A few British pilots from the battle are still alive, but it is not known how many of the international aviators — known collectively, after a phrase coined by Winston Churchill, as “The Few” — remain.

During his time as a pilot in Britain, Sawicz is credited with shooting down three German aircraft. He has been awarded Poland’s highest military order the Virtuti Military medal, and the Distinguished Flying Cross from Britain, the United States and the Netherlands.

He is survived by his wife Jadwiga. A service is planned for him at a later date in Warsaw.

Also, from the Telegraph: Wing Commander Tadeusz Sawicz

Wieczne odpoczynek racz mu dać Panie, a światłość wiekuista niechaj mu świeci.
Niech odpoczywa w pokoju, Amen.

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

Miłosz centenary

Poetry of Milosz Featured at Colombia
By Raymond Rolak

New York — An evening of poetry and remembrance will be held at Columbia Universityon Saturday, October 27, 2011 at 5:30 pm., in the Butler Library. It will be a celebration of the memorabilia and poems of Czeslaw Milosz.

He died in 2004 at the age of 93 and had previously been a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California-Berkley from 1961 to 1998.

Milosz, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1980, has an exhibition of artifacts opening at the Butler Library. Controversy always followed him. He refused to categorically identify himself as either a Pole or a Lithuanian. He defected to France in 1951 and immigrated to the United States in 1960.

The commemorated author will be honored with comments by Professor Helen Vendler of Harvard University. The event will coincide with other multilingual readings of his poetry by members of the Colombia University community. Also featured will be Colombia’s Alan Timberlake and Dr. Anna Frajlich, who will both do readings.

Another celebration of the centennial of his birth will be the academic poetry conference at Claremont McKenna College in Los Angeles, October 19-21. Readings by Polish and American Poets including Piotr Florczyk, Jacek Gutorow and Joanna Treciak will be featured on Thursday, October 20th at 3:00 PM.

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