The Media in Poland

Under communist rule, media in Poland was under heavy censorship. For nearly four decades, the government controlled every source of news for the public, hence determining exactly what the public should know, and what it shouldn’t. This almost complete censorship lasted till the people’s movement led by Solidarity put forward ‘the lessening of government censorship’ as one of its 21 demands in the Gdansk Agreement of August 1980. This agreement, coupled with Gorbachev’s new policy of glasnost, resulted in the reform of much of the censorship process. Although complete freedom of press was still far from being achieved, the passing of a few legislations ensured that the process of getting a completely free press was underway in Poland in the 1980s. However, this complete freedom was achieved only after the fall of communism in 1989. This initiated the subsequent transformation of the Polish media sphere.

On April 11, 1990, Polish parliament passed an anti-censorship act that modified the Press Act of 1984 implemented by the previous communist administration. With the sweeping economic reforms that were being implemented, the structure of the Polish media also underwent a transformation. In the print media, journalists who had previously worked for state owned newspapers now had the opportunity to take over the ownership of these papers. Also, the government opened the print media up to foreign investment, which soon led to the complete privatization of the print media sector with a majority of the newspapers being owned by foreign investors. The electronic media too, was subject to a number of reforms. The state-owned broadcasting broadcaster “Polish Radio and Television” was broken into separate entities – ‘Polish Radio’ and ‘Polish Television’ and transformed into public companies. Several policies encouraging commercial radio and television channels were also implemented, which led to a great increase in commercial interests in radio and TV as well as the surge in foreign investment in this media. However, the foreign investment in the broadcast sphere was not as high as that in the print sphere because the government had restricted foreign ownership of broadcast channels to 33 percent.

Since the implementation of these reforms, the Polish Press has by and large enjoyed absolute freedom in its reportage. However, there still exist certain laws framed in the Polish Constitution which are seen as barriers to absolute press freedom in the country today. One of the most crucial factors which impact press freedom in Poland is that journalists and editors are liable for criminal prosecution for a variety of acts which are not considered “criminal” in several other countries of the world. For instance, if an editor chooses not to publish a reader’s response, he/she runs the risk of having criminal proceedings initiated against him/her. Recently, the editor of one of the independent newspapers in a rural region of the country was sentenced to nine months of community service at 30 hours a month because he did not publish the reply of a local politician to articles the newspaper had run about him. Another such clause is, if a journalist does not take explicit permission to quote an interviewed person directly, he runs the same risk. Consider this law in the Indian context, and you would have all the reporters who make their day’s story quota by reporting the war of words between politicians fighting criminal cases in courts. Offending religious beliefs is another important clause that journalists are often tried under. In January 2010, the Polish Supreme Court imposed a 500,000 zloty (Rs. 75 lakh) fine on Polsat TV because a feminist activist invited on one of its shows had parodied a well-known presenter from the extremely conservative Catholic radio station Radio Maryja, and this was ruled to be offensive to Christian sensibilities. Apart from these legal restrictions placed on it, the Polish media is also threatened by a lack of objectivity in its reportage, and is characterized by a politically partisan nature. Almost all media, whether print or broadcast, have fairly evident political leanings.

In recent times, however, there have been changes in the media scenario in Poland in terms of the law. The government introduced certain legislative changes towards the end of December 2010 which have provided the media a certain degree of leeway in terms of the laws mentioned in this article. Upon overall analysis, the Polish media certainly seems to be a healthy, free institution. According to the Observatory for Media Freedom in Poland at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Poland ranked 24^th in the reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index in 2011-12 (as compared to 32^nd in 2010-11), higher than European heavyweights UK (28^th), France (38^th), Spain (39^th), as well as the USA (47^th) which saw a fall of 27 places compared to last year, primarily because of the arrest of journalists following the Wall Street protests. India, on this index, came in only at number 131. While this may not be a completely satisfying Index in terms of its basis and its methodology, it does provide a certain frame of reference. Going by this frame of reference, Poland seems to be taking great strides in terms of the freedom enjoyed by its press; however, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.

Bigos, Pierogi, Pączek anyone?

When I sat down to plan out what aspects of Poland I was going to write about for the purpose of this project, I didn’t plan on writing a post on Polish food. It’s such a generic topic, I thought. One can write a post on food no matter which country is being written about. But over the course of my reference for the rest of my posts, I realised just how intrinsic food is to various aspects of Polish life. The Polish love their food. And as it turns out, it’s not only the Polish who love it.

With a rich cuisine that varies from the simple to exotic, Poland is about as close to food heaven as you can get, especially for meat-lovers. By the look of it, there is much, much more to Polish cuisine than the sausages it is famous for, although sausages do form an important part of the

food. Polish food is not for weight-watchers, however. It is hearty, and uses a lot of cream and egg. It is rich in meat, especially pork, chicken and beef, and vegetables like beetroot, potato, cucumbers, sauerkraut, mushrooms along with sour cream and spices such as dill, caraway seeds, parsley etc. Soups form a very important part of polish cooking, with several varieties of soups being a part of the daily meal in Polish households.

The main meal in Polish households is eaten at about 2 p.m. or later and is usually composed of three courses. The first course comprises of a variety of soups, ranging from simpler variations such as hot cucumber soup (known as zupa ogorkowa), to the more elaborate varieties such as

the sour-tasting rye soup made with potatoes, sausage or egg, which is often eaten with bread (known as Urek).The more festive variation of soup is known as barszcz, which itself comes in multiple forms. Some of the more popular versions are either a thick sour wheat and potato starch soup sometimes had with cream or a clear red soup made from beetroot, garlic and mushroom and had with dumplings or a hard-boiled egg.The main course of the meal is all about the meat. Among the most popular Polish main dishes is the Bigos, also known as the ‘hunter’s stew’. It is said to be one of Poland’s national dishes, but doesn’t have one standard recipe as the preparation varies from household to household. Basically a stew of meat and cabbage, bigos can contain ingredients ranging from white cabbage, sauerkraut (kapusta kiszona in Polish), various cuts of meat and sausages, often whole or puréed tomatoes, honey and mushrooms. The meats may include pork (often smoked), ham, bacon, sausage, veal, beef as well as leftover cuts. Bigos is the dish for which the saying “some like it in the pot nine days old” seems to have been invented. Evidently, families prepare it days in advance as it is said to taste best at least

2-3 days after being cooked. Another typical polish dish is pierogi, which are basically dumplings stuffed with potato filling, sauerkraut, ground meat, cheese or fruit. A dish that is common to several Eastern European countries, Poland hasnonetheless made pierogi its own. The Polish version of the Pork cutlet, known as kotlet schabowy, is another favourite. Dessert is the regular fare of cakes, doughnuts, rolls and breads, although the Polish have lent each variety their own signature style. Babka is a raisin-covered, sugary cake, said to be very popular, while Pączek is a festive delicacy, which is basically a closed donut filled with rose marmalade or other fruit conserves. The Polish version of cheesecake however, is said to be to die for.

I can go on describing the various dishes that I have been told about and that I have read about, but the best way to experience any kind of food, is to sample it firsthand. As India unfortunately, doesn’t offer options for eating out Polish style, we’ll all have to bide our time till we can get ourselves to Poland and sample these delicacies firsthand. And after hearing and reading about all that culinary delights that Poland has to offer, I would say it is reason enough to plan that Polish vacation.

Katyn: A land soaked in blood.

Katyn. A word that was taboo for 45 years of communist rule. A word that chills the hearts of Poles, bringing back horrific memories. A word that can open a can of worms even today.

Katyn forest, near the town of Smolensk in present day Belarus, was discovered to be a site of mass executions where as many as 20,000 Poles were shot to death and buried by the secret police of the Soviet Union in 1940. These mass killings came to light only when German armies invading Russia in 1943 came across mass of Polish officers in the Katyn forest in 1943. Upon carrying out an introductory exhumation, it was found that the buried bodies belonged to several thousand Polish officers and civilians who had been interned at a Soviet prison camp near Smolensk and investigators accused the Soviet Union of carrying out mass executions in May1940. In response, the Soviet Union denied all responsibility and put the blame on Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union claimed that the Poles had been working on a construction site when German troops invaded the site and carried out the massacre. However, subsequent forensic analysis estimated the killings to be in early 1940, when the area was still under Soviet control. Despite hard evidence, the Soviet Union continued to deny responsibility of the killings, which led to the severing of the political relationship between Stalin’s government and the Polish government in exile. The Soviet Union then set about trying to establish a government for Poland made up of Polish communists.

The Katyn Massacre wedged a permanent divide in all Polish-Soviet relations for the remainder of the war and the years of communist rule that came after. For the Polish people, Katyn became a symbol of Polish suffering under Stalin, leaving a permanent undercurrent of hostility towards the Soviet Union. Despite various independent inquiries into Katyn identifying the Soviet Union as being responsible, the Soviet government denied it for decades, pushing the blame onto Nazi Germany. The communist government in power in Poland accepted this explanation without protest and Katyn became a taboo topic in Poland during the years of communist rule. It was only after the non-communist coalition government came into power in Poland in1989 that the Polish government officially shifted the blame for Katyn from the Nazis to the Soviet Secret police, the NKVD.

After six decades, in 1992, the Russian government released documents which proved that Soviet Politburo and the NKVD had been responsible for the massacre and cover-up and revealing that there may have been more than 20,000 victims. In a crucial move in improving diplomatic relations, the Russian government acknowledged the tragedy at Katyn and opened a memorial at the site of the killings in the year 2000. On April 7, 2010, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin joined Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk at a ceremony commemorating the massacre, marking the first time that a Russian leader had taken part in such a commemoration. Later that year, the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly, the State Duma, officially declared that Joseph Stalin and other Soviet leaders were responsible for ordering the execution of the Polish officers in Katyn. Over the years, several other sites of mass execution were also discovered, including the Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps, the NKVD headquarters in Smolensk, and at prisons in Kalinin (Tver), Kharkiv, Moscow, and other Soviet cities. All these executions have since been attributed to Stalin and the then Soviet government.

In a bitter irony, Stalin’s brutal massacre of Polish officers and civilians came back to haunt him when Germany broke the non-aggression pact, and invaded the Soviet Union. When the Polish government in exile and Soviet government agreed to combine their efforts against the Nazi Army, the Polish government asked for the tens of thousands of Polish Army officials taken prisoner by the Soviet Union to be released In order to join the War effort. By then, of course, Stalin had already carried out the executions, losing what would have been a crucial support in the War against Germany.

For the millions who lost friends and family in this display of complete human depravity however, this small piece of what has been called ‘poetic justice’, is in fact, no justice at all. Due to the strategic targeting of Stalin and his officers, Poland lost almost an entire generation of its top-level government officials, Army officials and intelligentsia including teachers, doctors, scientists and lawyers, in a very small amount of time. In one swift blow, much of the driving power and the leadership of the country had been eliminated.

Euro 2012

Like most other European nations, Poland too, is football crazy. The Biało-czerwoni, that is the Red and Whites, may not be one of the heavyweights when it come to European football, but they boast of a fan following that is as loud and loyal as any fan following in the world of football. Many fans of the Polish football team still dwell on the glory days of the ‘70s and the ‘80s, when the Polish team made their mark on international football by making it to two World Cup semifinals in one decade, with the crowning glory being the Olympic Gold the national team won in 1972. The great Polish stalwarts – Kazimierz Deyna, Jan Tomaszewski, Grzegorz Lato – were icons of the game. Lato, now President of the Polish Football Association (PZPN), was the top scorer in the 1974 edition of the World Cup, where Poland finished third, with 7 goals. But this golden period of Polish football soon came to an end when the national team witnessed a dramatic slump after 1986, failing to qualify for any World Cup until 2002. The Polish fans weren’t going to lose faith, however. They stuck on with their national team, through a rough period that lasted for almost a decade and a half. But at the end of it, they were rewarded when the fortunes of the Polish national team started looking up in the early 2000s. While their football team is trying to work its way into the top teams of the world, Polish football fans received the biggest reward for their unwavering support when UEFA chose Poland to be the co-hosts, along with Ukraine, for the 2012 UEFA European Football Championships, the second largest football event in the world after the football World Cup.

Poland and Ukraine were chosen to co-host the 2012 edition of the Euro by UEFA’s executive committee in what was seen as a surprise decision as the two Slavic nations beat off strong bids from favourite Italy, as well as the joint bid from Croatia and Hungary. Needless to say, this announcement was followed by scenes of jubilation on the streets of Poland, as Polish football fans celebrated the prospect of hosting the football extravaganza. This will be first time any country from the former eastern bloc has hosted the tournament since Yugoslavia in 1976. The Polish team’s head coach, Dutchman Leo Beenhakker hit the nail on the head when he said, in reaction to this decision, "Eastern Europe has a great history in sport and in football and they still have great players but what they have been missing has been good infrastructure, stadiums and training facilities. Now the governments and the football federations are obliged to realise all their promises within the next five years and make these improvements. This is fundamental for football in Poland and Ukraine."

Euro 2012 is scheduled to be held between 8 June and I July. With less than 80 days to go for the tournament to kick-off, Poland is into the last stretch of organizational work, as the country prepares itself to host thousands of fans, tourists, officials and media persons from across the world. If there was ever an opportunity for Poland to show that it has left its communist past behind and emerged as a modern European power to be reckoned with – it is now. There have already been criticisms of Poland in the initial phase of preparation, but the organizers have managed to come up to speed by now. Whether the two Slavic nations can pull it off, remains to be seen. While football fans across the country get set for a month-long celebration, the Polish administration and government watch on warily. Either the gamble to host such a high-profile event will pay off and bring welcome investments that will help Poland tide over the European economic slowdown; or if Poland is not ready, the bold move could backfire completely.

For the Polish football fan however, none of this matters. All he knows is that his team automatically qualifies by virtue of being one of the hosts. Thus, this time around, there is a team to cheer for, and more importantly, there is a team worth cheering for. So come June, all eyes will be on the Euro 2012, as an entire nation holds its breath.

Krakow: The new Prague?

If you’re looking to go to a beautiful place where you can soak in history, art, culture and yet experience a vibrant and lively hub of activity; for the perfect European holiday, it is now time to turn to Poland, and experience the phenomenal city of Krakow. The royal capital for half a millennium, Krakow has witnessed and absorbed more of Poland’s history than any other city in the country. Krakow is a city that has retained much of its pre-war history, as it was one of the very few cities of Poland to come out of the Wars practically unscathed in terms of its buildings and art. Apart from the history, Krakow has a vibrant cultural life to be experienced. Beautiful cafes where local musicians engage diners, an exciting nightlife, and a buzz that comes with being a student city, thanks to the Jagiellonian University and various other colleges in the city, Krakow is fast becoming the new tourist hotspot in Europe. Such has been the experience of travelers in Krakow, that it has been christened ‘the new Prague’ on the European travel circuit.

One of the things that make Krakow a more meaningful and rich experience than your normal vacation, is the opportunity to visit the sites of among the worst human brutalities in history. A trip to Auschwitz and Birkenau, about an hour’s train ride away from Krakow, can be among the most moving experiences that you can ever have. While this may not be the ideal way for most to spend a day of their vacation, a visit into the horrifying past of millions of Poles can often make one appreciate much of what is taken for granted today. Yet, if this journey becomes too heart-wrenching, Krakow also offers tourists a chance to visit the factory of Oskar Schindler on the far side of the river Wisła; the site of heroism and humanity, which has now been captured in Steven Spielberg’s award-winning feature film.

Another must-visit in Krakow is the Wieliczka salt mine, a bus or train ride to the south of the city. The small town of Wieliczka has been included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List for an underground salt mine that has been operational for almost 1000 years. The part of the mine open to tourists takes you through halls and chambers, all sculpted out of salt. There are statues and figurines, altar pieces and other adornments all formed out of salt, through a combination of nature’s wonder and human effort. This thousand-foot deep complex, with nine levels and several underground lakes, is definitely a site to behold.

The old Jewish quarter of Kazimierz, initially seeped in tragedy due to the incredible losses suffered by the Jewish population of Poland, is witnessing a cultural revival of sorts. One of the most popular cultural hubs in Krakow today, Kazimierz has become among the top draws for the younger tourist population with great Jewish restaurants, cafes and pubs and clubs, all of which make up an exciting nightlife.

The charming old city of Krakow offers a glimpse into the rich cultural history of the country through the various architectural gems around every corner, some of which have been around since as long ago as the 8^th century. The entire old city of Krakow, which houses the beautiful Wawel castle and Rynek Glowny, the largest medieval square in Europe, has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site for the historical experience it offers. Yet, alongside history, the Old Town district has more bars per square meter than anywhere else in the world, making it one of the most happening areas in the city.

Krakow is also unique because of the number of diverse festivals it hosts. Every year Kraków hosts over 100 festivals, including about 50 festivals of international importance, such as the Jewish Culture Festival (since 1990), Krakowskie Zaduszki Jazzowe (Cracow Jazz All Souls' Day Festival, since 1954), Kraków Film Festival (since 1961), Music in the Old Kraków International Festival (since 1975), International Print Triennial held in Kraków (since 1966), and Festival of Street Theatres (since 1988). With all these plus the various activities that keep unfolding in the city around the year, Krakow has justly earned itself the title of the ‘Cultural capital of Poland’, as well as being adjudged the European Capital of Culture for the year 2000 but the European Union.

Poland: Religion

Religion, as we Indians know only too well, has a tendency to become a very important factor in a country’s social, political and even economic issues. In India, religion becomes significant in the context of its heterogeneity. Poland, however, is an interesting study due to the fact that it is so starkly different from India in terms of religious unity. Although the Polish Constitution guarantees freedom of religion to its citizens, more than 95 percent of Poland’s population is Roman Catholic, and most of them devoutly so. Although Poland has a had a history of ever-changing international borders and substantial immigration across these borders, in the period post WW II, Poland was found to become an almost entirely Roman Catholic state. The fact that Karol Wojtyla, a native of Poland, reigned as Pope John Paul II for more than two and a half decades also served to strengthen the position of the Catholic Church in Poland. The religious minorities that do exist are the Eastern Orthodox Christians, Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses as well as sparse pockets of Jewish populations.

The Catholic Church of Poland, largely due to the substantial majority of followers that it enjoys, has thus become an institution in itself, and an extremely powerful one at that. The Church has regularly been involved in the political scenario of the country. In fact, during the Soviet-backed communist regime in Poland, the Church became an important vehicle of support for the movement against communism. The Church became a symbol of the Polish patriotism and identified with the ideals of freedom, human rights and democracy. The opposition to the totalitarian regime began to be identified with the Church as much as with the opposition leaders. Such was the Church’s influence that during the Round Table talks between the ruling communist party and the opposition in 1989, the Church sat in as a third party.

After the collapse of communism, the remarkable expansion of the Church became a characteristic feature of Poland’s subsequent socio-political life, as the Catholic Church soon filled in the vaccum left by the communists. The Catholic Church claimed land, power and “the role of the moral arbiter of the nation.” The Church was strongly supported by the first President of democratic Poland, Lech Wałesa, and hence enjoyed significant influence in the political sphere under his Presidency. As the Church began to heavily influence political agenda, its crusade against abortion came to the forefront in the early 1990s, neglecting pressing economic issues in the process. Abortion had been legalized in the year 1956, but the Church pressed for a ban and managed to have the law passed in Parliament in 1993, despite the fact that only about 10 percent of the total population of the country supported a complete ban on abortion. The Church introduced voluntary religious education in primary schools in 1990, but had made it mandatory within two years.

It was perhaps this interference of the Church in the political sphere that ultimately resulted in the loss of some popular support. Compulsory religious education, strong anti-abortion laws, all the legislation that that Church had had enforced during Wałesa’s presidency seems to have caused the development of resentment towards the Church among the Polish public. Ironically, the loss of popularity of the Church and Wałesa resulted in the return of power of the communist party, which both, the Church and Wałesa had fought so hard against.

Despite this slump in popularity of the Church in the mid-1990s, a vast majority of the Polish population still remains devoutly Roman Catholic and a follower of the Catholic Church. In the past decade, several people in Poland have been looking towards newer religions or towards atheism. However, this new trend hardly makes a dent on the total population of Poland that still remains Roman Catholic. This majority of the Polish people are the ones who attend mass every Sunday, who religiously donate a percentage of their wages to the Church, and those who still look to the Catholic Church in times of hardship.

7 Poles who changed the World

Historically, Poland has always been one of the worst-ravaged, war-torn countries in the world. Unfortunately squeezed between two aggressive powers, Russia on one hand and Western Europe on the other, Poland has always been witness to some conflict. Yet, despite the ever-present tensions, Poland has unfailingly produced world-leaders in various fields. Here is a list of 7 Polish people whose achievements changed their respective fields of work, and often the world, forever.

1. Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin

Widely considered to be one of the greatest composers and pianists of all time, Chopin was born in Zelazowa Wola, Poland, in the year 1810, although he later moved to Paris, where he composed most of his classic works. He is said to have contributed greatly to creating a Polish national style of music, as he incorporated several Polish folk influences in his compositions. Although he died at the young age of 39 of tuberculosis, Chopin was extremely prolific in his lifetime. He has to his credit, a large number of polonaises (slow Polish dances), mazurkas (Polish folk dance with a lively tempo), nocturnes (musical composition inspired by the night), études (instrumental musical composition), preludes etc. Although he died in Paris, as per his dying wish, his heart was removed from his body and taken back to Poland where it now lays in a church not far from his last Polish residence.

2. Marie Skłodowska Curie

Marie Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, is famous for being the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for Physics for her pioneering work on Radioactivity. She also became the first person to be awarded two Nobel prizes, when she was awarded the Nobel again, in 1911, this time in the field of Chemistry, for the discovery of the elements Radium and Polonium. When Poland was partitioned into three parts and governed by three foreign powers, Curie was born in Warsaw, in the Russian-ruled part and educated via Poland’s underground Universities during Russian rule. She later moved to Paris for higher education where she subsequently settled down with her husband, Pierre Curie. She always remained attached to her homeland however, visiting frequently with her children.

3. Karol Wojtyla – Pope John Paul II

Pope John Paul II, who held the Papacy from 1978 until his death in 2005, was the first non-Italian to be elected as Pope by the Catholic Church since 1523. Born Karol Józef Wojtyła in the small Polish town of Wadowice, he was educated in Poland, and became the youngest Pope in 132 years. John Paul II has been widely credited for modernizing the Papacy and played a significant role in the fall of Communism, particularly in his native Poland. Upon his death, John Paul II was popularly bestowed the title “the Great”, becoming only the fourth Pope in history to be so acclaimed. Despite facing both criticism and controversy during his reign, Pope John Paul II is today fondly remembered by Catholics the world over.

4. Wisława Szymborska

Contemporary Polish poet Wisława Szymborska drew international attention when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1996 for “poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality”. Writing in her native Polish, Szymborska’s work often posed a challenge to translators because of her tendency to play on the language with invented words and ‘syntactic tricks’, yet her poems have been read and acclaimed worldwide. One of the most popular poets in Poland, the sale of her collections of poems have often rivaled the sale of several popular prose authors. Szymborska died very recently, on 1^st February 2012, leaving behind a body of work which, although not very large, continues to draw the emotions and sensibilities of Poles, as well as poetry lovers from around the world.

5. Henryk Sienkiewicz

Born in Wola Okrzejska, a village in eastern Poland, Sienkiewicz is famous for being the first Pole to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1905 for highly popular novel, Quo Vadis? Translated into more than 50 languages and made into a film multiple times, Quo Vadis has been Sienkiewicz’s most widely-read work internationally, which his historic novels “With Fire and Sword”, “The Deluge” and “Fire in the Steppe” are best known in Poland.

6. Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus, born Mikolaj Kopernik, was one of the most famous scientists of all time, who is most renowned for changing the way science perceived the Universe by being the first one to propose that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe. Born in the year 1473 in the city of Torun, Poland, Copernicus went on to become one of the most revolutionary Renaissance astronomers and one of the most important figures in the history of science.

7. Irina Sendler

Irena Sendler, commonly referred to as Irena Sendlerowa in Poland, was a Polish Catholic social worker who served in the Polish Underground and the resistance organization in German-occupied Warsaw during WW II. Sendler’s heroic efforts came to light after the end of the War, when it was discovered that she, with the help of some other members of the Polish resistance had saved the lives of 2500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw ghetto, providing them with false documents and sheltering them in individual and group children’s homes outside the ghetto. Numerous children rescued by her came back often in the course of their lifetimes and maintained a relationship with her. Sendler was awarded Poland’s highest civilian award, the ‘Order of the White Eagle’ in 2003 and was posthumously awarded the Audrey Hepburn humanitarian award in 2009 for her monumental and inspiring efforts.

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The Boy from Kraków and the Man from Warsaw

I have always reacted intensely to war stories. No matter how much you read about it in textbooks, nothing makes you experience the horror of war quite as intensely as the real life stories of people who have experienced it. And if you were Jewish and living in Poland during the Second World War, the stories don’t get much worse than yours; although one can never tell with War. The movie The Pianist tells one such story – that of Władysław Szpilman; and the man who made the film, Polish director Roman Polański, has lived through another.

The Pianist is the screen adaptation of the autobiography of Władysław Szpilman, the famous Polish pianist. It is an understated, yet intensely moving account of Szpilman’s survival through the Jewish ghettoes of Warsaw, his separation from his family when he miraculously escapes boarding the train to the concentration camps, and his desperate attempts to survive in hiding as the War goes on. While Szpilman’s story is riveting in itself, what makes the movie so painfully memorable, is the details. Those few second-long scenes, which have nothing to do with the plot as such, but make the sufferings of the Jews so viscerally real for the viewer. And these details come from somewhere within the dark recesses of Roman Polański’s mind, where he has stored the haunting memories of his own childhood in war-torn Poland.

Born to a Polish-Jewish father and a Russian-Catholic mother in Paris, Polański and his parents moved to Kraków in 1936, and were living there when Hitler marched into Poland with his troops in 1939. At the age of six, Polański, like millions of other Jews, was forced to live with his family in the Jewish ghettoes of Kraków. As a boy, he was made to witness his parents’ deportation to concentration camps and was left to fend for himself for the remaining years of the war. In The Pianist, it is these war-time experiences that Polański has drawn on to provide a harrowing portrait of the brutalities of War in Poland as the setting for Szpilman’s story.

The scenes that linger in your mind after having watched the film, the ones which make you shudder at the sheer inhumanity of the times, are instances that Polański has witnessed and experienced first-hand. The scene where a young boy who is attempting to escape through the gutter with food stolen for his family is beaten to death even as Szpilman is trying to rescue him, must reverberate somewhere with Polański’s own memories of slipping through Kraków’s sewers with gangs of Jewish children to steal food for his own starving family. The stories of Nazi brutalities are a re-telling of the experiences shared by both, Polański as well as Szpilman. In his autobiography, Polański recounts one instance in particular:

“I had just been visiting my grandmother… when I received a foretaste of things to come. At first I didn't know what was happening. I simply saw people scattering in all directions. Then I realized why the street had emptied so quickly. Some women were being herded along it by German soldiers. Instead of running away like the rest, I felt compelled to watch. One older woman at the rear of the column couldn't keep up. A German officer kept prodding her back into line, but she fell down on all fours… Suddenly a pistol appeared in the officer's hand. There was a loud bang, and blood came welling out of her back. I ran straight into the nearest building, squeezed into a smelly recess beneath some wooden stairs, and didn't come out for hours. I developed a strange habit: clenching my fists so hard that my palms became permanently calloused. I also woke up the next morning to find that I had wet my bed.”

At the end of the War, both Szpilman and Polański had managed to survive. They had both lived at the mercy of old acquaintances or strangers, as scavengers, tramps, always on the edge of starvation, in a desperate attempt at survival, through the years that would come to be known as one of the most horrifying period for Jews in human history. Both survived, moved on and eventually went on to flourish in their respective fields; but their experiences of the War always stayed with them. It is this similar trajectory of their lives, perhaps, that drew Polański to direct The Pianist. In all the 26 films that Polański made before taking on Szpilman’s story, not one film did he make with the theme of War, despite it being the context of a large and significant part of his childhood. But when he first read Szpilman’s book, he is reported to have said, “This is the story I’ve been looking for, for years…”

Almost 40 years after he left Poland, Polański returned to the country where he grew up, through The Pianist. What the world went on to read in history books, Polański recounted from the first person perspective of both himself, as well as Szpilman. For the first time, he re-visited the horrors of his childhood through his cinema, telling the world, in the process, the story of Władysław Szpilman, of Roman Polański and the tragedy of the Jewish people of Poland.

“Fitting communism onto Poland is like putting a saddle on a cow.”

As hard as he tried to impose communism on Poland post World War II, this famous comment made by Joseph Stalin in 1944 seemed to be almost prophetic when Poland became the first Eastern European state to break free of communism in 1989. As Poland elected the first non-communist Prime Minister in Eastern Europe since the Second World War, it led the collapse of communism and the Soviet Bloc as well as ushering in the end of the Cold War. However, after surviving 45 years of turbulent communist rule, this change was a long time coming.

The Yalta Conference, held in February 1945 between the Big Three, (Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin) decided the fate of several war-affected countries, including Poland. Due to the dominant position of the Soviet Union’s Red Army in Poland at the time, Poland was formally decreed to be under Soviet control. Under Stalin’s rule, almost all Polish war-time leaders were either imprisoned, killed or driven out of the country. While general elections were officially held, these were later proven to be manipulated, and resulted in the communists coming to power. Various communist parties were consolidated with the formation of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) which continued to rule the country till 1989.

In their bid to communize Poland, the Soviet governments nationalized all commercial and industrial enterprises which employed more than 50 workers. Heavy industry was prioritized in the thrust towards industrialization. The government attempted to enforce collective agriculture, however this was eventually abandoned. These and several other policies of the Communist government were met with resistance in the form of frequent protests throughout the tenure of communist rule. In 1956, a large-scale industrial strike broke out at Poznań, with workers demanding “bread and freedom”. March 1968 saw mass protests by student and the intelligentsia at Warsaw, Kraków, Lublin, Gdańsk and other cities. Fluctuating prices and frequent price hikes resulted in the strikes and protests in 1970 and ’76. The communist government used unrestrained force to suppress these protests. However, they could not change the fact that the social and economic conditions of Poland were collapsing dramatically and political ferment was brewing as support for the opposition grew.

In 1980, when the government announced further hikes in food prices, it triggered off widespread strikes and riots all over the country. The 1980 protests were more widespread and more organized that the protests that had taken place before. Although they started with demands of raising wages, the strikes soon incorporated larger economic and political aspects. By this time, the communist government was no longer in a strong enough position to suppress the protests by force, and eventually, had to concede to several of the strikers’ demands. One of the pivotal outcomes of the 1980 strikes was that the workers obtained the right to form independent trade unions, and to strike. This resulted in the convention of workers from across Poland and the formation of Solidarność or ‘Solidarity’, a nation-wide independent and self-governing trade union, which eventually grew to be the representative body of the entire Polish population with 10 million members, or 60 percent of the then Polish workforce.

The last decade of communist rule in Poland was a period of great turmoil, with the clash between the demand for significant economic reforms and the attempt to maintain communist control. The formation of Solidarity gave the Polish people a glimpse into democracy that had so far been doggedly suppressed by the communist government. Debates on reform policies took place in public forums, the independent press flourished. With growing public dialogue, the pressure on the government to implement social and economic reforms intensified, resulting in large scale social tension. In order to suppress this growing dissent, martial law was imposed on Poland in December 1981. Poland was under martial law for a period of close to two years, during which the government first suspended and eventually dissolved Solidarity. Military rule was finally lifted in July 1983, however, it wasn’t until the election of Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in 1985 that the democratization of Poland became a possibility.

In 1989, the government, the opposition and the Polish Church convened for the Round Table Talks, through which Solidarity was re-established and the opposition was allowed to stand for parliamentary elections. The elections that followed were not entirely free, as the communists had reserved 65 percent of the seats in the lower house of Parliament for themselves. Despite this however, Solidarity won an overwhelming majority in the Upper House in the elections, and subsequently put up a non-communist representative, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, as Prime Minister, even as the Presidency was held by the former Prime Minister of the communist party, Wojciech Jaruzelski. Eventhough they weren’t completely free, it was these elections that eventually led the way to a Poland that was free of Soviet-communist control, as the PZPR, losing members and confidence, dissolved itself in 1990. In November 1990, the first fully free elections were held for the post of President, which were won by the Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa.

After 45 years of the former Soviet Union trying to saddle a cow, Poland ultimately emerged as a Parliamentary Representative Democratic Republic.