The scream of exasperation...

A round anniversary means usually celebrations – almost the whole Poland will come to a halt for a minute at five in the afternoon to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising.

Sadly, the celebrations are laced with politicking, taking away from one another the heritage of Armia Krajowa (EN: Home Army). The more time goes by, the more myths there are about those events, the less veterans celebrate it alive, the first day of August becomes the day for the politicians to demonstrate their attachment (true or feigned?) to the history of contemporary Poland. Today our president once again accentuated he stemmed from the family with patriotic traditions – his father had taken part in the fights of the Uprising, his mother as he declared also had participated in it. As many critics pointed out Kaczyński’s mother spent those days hidden somewhere on the Mazovian countryside, his father indeed fought, but president somehow passes over the rest of his life – mostly membership in PZPR and lucrative contracts in Libya… Kaczyński seems to have a monopoly for all the graceful accomplishments of Poles in their history since the beginning of WW2 – equating his opponents to ZOMO…

My family, to be precise my mother’s aunt (cousin of my grandmother) and my mother’s cousin try to persuade me that my R.I.P. grandmother was one of insurgents in the Uprising – they follow the tendency to proliferate the number of insurgents, coin the next myths, so they do something I disapprove of. In fact my grandmother was just a civilian and did not participate in the fights, many times she carried the messages for the insurgents through the sewers, many times she acted as a nurse and looked after the wounded insurgents, but what is the point in adding her merits she had not deserved? She lost her parents in the uprising, on 5th August 1944 the tenement where she lived was bombarded, so she lost all her belongings, until he end of September she roamed around (meanwhile helping as I mentioned) Warsaw’s basements or rubble, looking out for shelters, then in the last days of September she was captured by the Germans and got away from the transport to temporary German camp in Pruszków and escaped to the countryside where she waited out the last months of the war. WW2, which a heavy toll on her – she lost her dearest ones – parents and first husband (he was a soldier of Home Army, died in the battle of Monte Cassino in May 1944), during the uprising as a result of protracted stress her hair turned grey…

This year the press reports are also abundant in critical articles and commentaries about Warsaw Uprising, with the ones by professor Jan Ciechanowski coming to the fore. Some regard it as a blasphemy, but I, without taking a line on it, think it is necessary to let such people give their voice. Brushing aside the entire mythology I can today pay respects to my peers, young inhabitants of Warsaw in the flower of their youth who paid the ultimate price in the uneven fight against the German occupier. They were fighting the losing battle, as mine and my friends’ grandparents say, the Uprising was doomed to end with a total defeat… That is why I am not sure whether the generals who were in charge of the Uprising deserve my respect. They brought about something what was totally unprepared and consequently turned into mayhem… My friend’s grandfather who came alive from Auschwitz concentration camp and who was in the centre of Warsaw on 1st August sixty fives years ago says “Hour W” is just a myth, someone tossed a grenade and thus gave a cue to the outbreak… Generals undoubtedly badly foresaw the political situation – Stalin’s army stopped on the East bank of Vistula and stayed there until mid-September – according to Stalin’s plans Warsaw was wiped out and the place was ready to build a new capital of dependent country, build after the communist fashion… Should we blame our allies – United States and Great Britain? Together with Stalin they divided the cake in the conference in Teheran a year earlier. Churchill and Roosevelt admitted they had to give in – Soviet contribution in war against Nazi was too big (for Stalin sending the regiments of thousands of soldiers to die in the battle was like snapping his fingers) and they had to accept his conditions concerning the new spheres of influences in Europe – and so Poland, the everlasting enemy of the Russian nation became a satellite country of the communist empire, it could be worse, we weren’t incorporated into the Soviet Union and were not a soviet republic.

What else could be done? Maybe we should not allow for such material losses and death toll – the ones who died were mostly of the intelligentsia. Maybe if they had lived out they would have helped build a better country even under the conditions of subjection to Soviet Union, maybe they would be accused of collaboration with the Nazi and imprisoned, tortured or maybe just sentenced to death…

I do not hold with the proposals of declaring the anniversary of Uprising’s outbreak a national holiday. I do not want to celebrate the calamity…

And last but not least, the radio journalists asked today what was the patriotism of Poles living at the beginning of twenty-first century. In the times of peace when there is no need to lay down the life for the homeland, there are many way in which it can be manifested. Offhand I figured out a weird one – my today’s resolution is that I will not put my money into so-called antybelka (very often offered these days, for instance by Open Finance or Eurobank) – I will not evade taxes within the letter of law in the situation when my state is in need of money. I will not evade taxes, I will not pick up a fight, I will not emanate with hatred, I will not be green with envy, I will not cease to criticise my country when necessary but I will be proud when there are serious reasons to be, I will not spread myths…?