Poland - A New Fight for Freedom?

WARSAW UPRISING MEMORIAL

As part of my work in Poland in the 1990’s, I took the opportunity to visit the Warsaw Uprising Memorial. The experience was incredibly moving.

On August 1, 1944 the Polish Underground Resistance led by the Home Army rose up to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. The movement was designed to coincide with the retreat of the Germans ahead of the advance of the Soviet Army. However, Stalin halted the Red Army in the city’s suburbs on the eastern side of the Vistula River. There he waited for more than 63 days while the Germans destroyed the city.

The resistance finally capitulated on October 2. The Germans immediately began the removal of the city’s remaining population from the city to a transit camp while across the Vistula, the Russians waited. Out of the 350,000 to 550,000 civilians who went to the German camp, 90,000 were sent to labor camps and 60,000 were sent to concentration camps. And the Soviets waited. With the removal of the population, the Germans continue the destruction of the city. More than 85 percent of the physical infrastructure including buildings, homes, and monuments were destroyed. And the Soviets waited.

On January 12, 1945, almost entirely destroyed, Warsaw was liberated by the Red Army and the First Polish Army and Warsaw were absorbed under the influence of Stalin and the Soviet government.

Because of the resistance of the communist government, The Warsaw Uprising Memorial was not erected for decades. Finally on August 1, 1989, the monument, designed by sculptor Wincenty Kućma and architect Jacek Budyn was unveiled.

This detail of the Memorial shows a resistance fighter emerging from the Warsaw sewer. The sewer system was used as a communications network during the uprising.

The strain of the battle is evident in these faces.

It should be remembered that Poland has a long history of fighting for its freedom. It was partitioned three times and wiped off the map in 1795. It reemerged in 1918 but was divided again in 1939 by Stalin and Hitler. Again, the country rose following the war but suffered 40 years of communist dictatorship. It wasn’t until 1991 that the first completely free Polish parliamentary election took place and freed the country from communist party rule. Freedom is fragile, however, and Freedom House reported in 2020 that Poland is no longer ranked in its highest category of “consolidated democracy.” The decline began in 2012 with the election of the Law and Justice Party which began an assault on the country’s judicial system and media that continues today. It follows a pattern toward authoritarian rule disturbingly found in a number of European countries.

The Warsaw Uprising Memorial remains today a symbol of the tenuous nature of the democratic rule of law.

In addition to the Memorial, I also visited a Nazi interrogation room but was unable to take photos. In an ordinary building downtown, it was basically a 10x12 unfinished cement encasement - floor, walls, ceiling. I was shown in the door and stood facing a small common wood table with a chair on the other side. Austere, oppressive, and frightening, it was clearly a passage to something much more sinister. The greyness and cold smell of the cement gave me a clammy sense of abandonment even though I could simply turn and walk out, which I did.

THE FRENCH DINNER

On a more pleasant note, our interpreter invited my colleagues and I to dinner at the home of her elderly parents. It was a small, modest apartment, warm with photos, nick-nacks, and old heavy furniture one would find in any elderly parlor in the Western world. To our surprise, translation wasn’t necessary. French was a language common enough to all of us. It was explained that for older people in Poland, French was a language very commonly used in their youth.

ŻELAZOWA WOLA

And on a musical note, I also took the opportunity to attend a concert in Żelazowa Wola, Chopin’s birthplace.

The house was too small to fit everyone in for the concert, so we all sat at tables in the backyard and watched the pianist and listened to the music through an open window in the parlor. It was a magic day.

Here are a couple of statues of Chopin on the grounds that are very powerful.

Even though Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola, he grew up in Warsaw. At the age of 20, he left Warsaw and at 21 settled in Paris where he spent the rest of his life. Ah! French again.