Waking up with Polish feelings

I live in Australia by choice, I am not Jewish and I was not born yet when the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was going through its tragic days of Jews fighting for their choice of death.

This morning I woke up too early to get up so I recorded yesterday’s programs from the Polish radio podcasts and went back to bed listening to my Sony Walkman. I fell asleep few minutes later without turning the Sony off. After some time I suddenly woke up hearing a very sad lament song from the days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbTwpLulfSk&noredirect=1

Yesterday was the 70ties anniversary of the start of the upraising. As a person brought up in communistic Poland where the Second World War education was very comprehensive and the messages frequently repeated, I knew the song and its origins rather well. This is a very touching song and I always had problems listening to it and feeling OK at the same time. I usually protected myself from unwanted emotions by not listening. This time the tune came unexpectedly waking me right up. I stayed in bed motionless listening to it and suddenly I started to sob not knowing even why. This was not a welcome reaction and I tried to shake it off as too sentimental.

I realised that my Polish roots are deep even if I love Australia, consider it my country and  myself an Australian.

The leaders of the uprising knew perfectly well that it was fated to be a military disaster. But they could not wait. And it was not they who chose the date. They retaliated in response to the Germans’ entry into the ghetto. It was a battle of heroism and despair, bravery and rage, a thirst for revenge and a protest against indifference. Contempt for the Germans and contempt for death. Defiance and revolt. And the sense that they were utterly alone. This was a battle to awaken the world’s consciences.

 

Weapons were few. Those which they managed to obtain from the Polish Underground Army (Armia Krajowa – AK) were inadequate for the needs of such a battle. And so they procured them by all possible means from the Aryan side and smuggled them into the ghetto. In underground factories they produced Molotov cocktails, light bulbs filled with sulphuric acid and hand grenades.

On 16 May at 20:15, the Germans blew up the Grand Synagogue on Tłomackie Street. This symbolically marked the end of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The final liquidation of streets, houses and people. The ghetto was laid to waste in a sea of rubble and ashes, beneath which, hidden in the bunkers, the last embers of life still flickered.

Excerpts from the book: ‘A look at the Warsaw Ghetto’ by Jacek Leociak,  DSH, Warsaw 2011

Recently I spent few years in Poland. Watching Polish political TV programs I got to know  Mr. Marek Edelman one of  “lives still flickering under the rubble of ashes” remaining after the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw. He was a  very wise man commanding respect and awe. I learnt a lot about modern Polish politics listening to him. He is not with us anymore and today I want to pay, in my small way, a tribute to the man who at 24 was one of the leaders of the Ghetto Uprising.