Polish poetry and the Polish politics of memory
On October 3, 2022, Minister Zbigniew Rau, the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, delivered a diplomatic note to the next West Germany with the amount of war reparations. In it, Poland demands, among other things, compensation for tangible and intangible losses in the amount of PLN 6 billion 220, therefore PLN 609 million, and compensation for the service.
The West German government sent a request for this note on January 3 – according to the German referral, the matter of reparations and compensation for war losses remains closed, and the German government does not intend to start negotiations on this matter.
Commenting on this exchange, German columnist Jacques Schuster wrote in “Die Welt”that Poland is not entitled to compensation from Germany. Moreover, in his opinion, the governments of Berlin and Warsaw require an examination of the history of truth, “To which, as well as German crimes, belongs the question of why Poles only notice the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by the Germans in 1943, and hardly help Jews.”
Paweł Jabłoński, the deputy chief of Polish diplomacy, referred to Schuster’s words. His findings, in order to talk about history, you need to recognize the basic facts:
“[…] during the war, your compatriots murdered almost 6 million of my compatriots, you plundered the whole country, cultural assets. You have destroyed all of Poland. Germany never paid for it. If you really don’t know that, then I’m asking you to come to Poland for a serious education. He took you to the Warsaw Uprising Museum, for a walk in the footsteps of the Ghetto walls, you will find out what “Żegota” was, who Irena Sendler was, who saved several Jewish children. Therefore, on Monday, send you an official invitation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and I hope that you will accept the invitation.”
The idea to suggest gaps in the education of the German journalist deserves praise. Let me help you, however, that a German journalist has been a victim of the memory policy of Polish schools for years, financed by the Polish government and scientific institutions place museum.
In 2018, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage around the world of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum. Currently, the Warsaw Ghetto Museum is an institution under construction. The seat of the museum will be the historic complex of Szpital Dziecięcy im. Bershon and Bauman in Warsaw. The opening is expected in 2025.
On the museum’s website you can read:
“Our mission is to use knowledge about everyday life, survival strategies, fights and the Holocaust of Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and other ghettos about German-occupied Poland.[…]”
You can read the text there: “Czeslaw Milosz: “Campo di Fiori”:
“Miłosz (…) wanted to say what the human condition is, how the attitudes of Poles are, how Poles look at the burning ghetto”
In his description of the part, devoted to the poem “Campo di Fiori” by Czesław Miłosz (1943), attention should be paid to the Polish population in the role of a passive observer towards the Holocaust.
This is what Dr. Wiesława Młynarczyk, chief specialist in the Education Department of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum and the originator of the film series of reportages “The Ghetto in Literature” tells us.
“Joyful Crowds Laughed” – this is how the indifference of Varsovians towards the uprising in the ghetto was described by Czesław Miłosz in the poem “Campo di Fiori”. Here is the quoted excerpt from the poem:
In Warsaw at the carousel,
On a sunny spring evening,
With the sounds of lively music.
Salvos behind the ghetto wall
A lively melody was drowned out
couples flew up
High in the clear sky.
Sometimes the wind from burning houses
He brought black kites,
They caught scraps in the air
Riding on a carousel.
He ruffled the girls’ dresses
This wind from burning houses
The happy crowds laughed
During the time dedicated to Warsaw Sunday.
Someone could read
That the people of Warsaw or Rome
He trades, he plays, he loves
Passing the martyr’s pyres.
Someone else read morally
About human passing,
Of oblivion that grows
Before the flame went out.
But I then
About the loneliness of the dying.
[…]
And those dying, lonely,
Already forgotten from the world,
Our language has become foreign to them
Like the language of an old planet.
Poem “Campo di Fiori” it was first published anonymously in a conspiracy pamphlet “From the Abyss”, index of 11 poems published in March 1944 in the 3,000 copies. The initiator of this publication was Adolf Berman, the equivalent of the Jewish National Committee, Tadeusz Sarnecki developed the addition of the factor with “Żegota”, and Ferdynand “Marek” Arczyński composed and printed this ingredient, using the presidium of “Żegota”, a secret printing house of the Polish Democracy Party. In 1945, this book of poems was reprinted in New York, where it was titled “Ghetto Poetry”, and a year later it was published in Hebrew in Tel Aviv. Under my own name “Campo di Fiori” included its author in the collection “Salves”, I was created in 1946. After that, the poem was reprinted ten times, also punished with additional foreign language versions.