REFLECTIONS ON WAR AND SOLIDARITY
We remember the German aggression against Poland and the heroic fight of the Polish soldier. At that time we were the attacked party, fighting in the fair war because in the defence of independence and the whole of the Polish country. We did not meet with the expressions of solidarity from allies, who denounced the war to Germany on 3 September 1939, but only in order to defend their nations against the alleged aggression. They were waiting for it till spring 1940. I do not know reactions of societies at that time – like the British, French or Belgian ones, but we do not have spectacular testimonies requiring immediate devotion of one’s own blood in the fight for Polish rights in Gdańsk. Or in September outside the buildings of the Foreign Ministry in London and Paris whoever was protesting, organizing meetings in the name of solidarity with Poland? It was 8 September 1968 when on the Warsaw Stadium of the Decade during the central harvest festival the former soldier of the National Army Ryszard Siwiec set himself on fire. This moment was caught only by the camera of the Security Services. Neither those present at stadium or viewers in front of TV could know about this tragedy. Władysław Gomułka and his followers were the central point of seeing and nothing could obscure this propaganda spectacle, and after it a success was announced. The act of Ryszard Siwiec was a form the objection of the citizen of the nation, which once experienced the lack of solidarity of the world, and also an evidence in the matter that the current group of the Polish People’s Republic breaches another fundament of the Polish identity. The tragic final of the biography of Siwiec was a form of objection to the aggression of armies of the Warsaw Treaty toward the Czechoslovakia. This invasion was participated also by soldiers of the Polish Army. It put Poles in the role of not only passive observers of someone else’s tragedy but also in the position of aggressors, like the Germans and the Soviets in September 1939. At that time the Primate of Millennium, in the opinion of functionaries, was to condemn communists: ‘Usage of Polish armies is, in the opinion of Wyszyński, as a fact which is particularly unpleasant – we read in a note of the Security Offices of 29 August 1968 – because other countries will understand it that we are on the same line (as imperialism of the USSR) – and it is against Polish traditions’. In our tradition there is a strong relation between a fight for freedom of tortured nations and the Polish act of solidarity towards their right aspirations. In the Polish political tradition also the state of deep faith and hope is inscribed – despite the experience that one day we will meet with a revenge due to this tradition. In 2012, at the National Stadium, in the presence of the ambassador of the Czech Republic, a monument was unveiled to commemorate Ryszard Siwiec, a hero of two nations. In 2014, on the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the terrible war, our part of the European continent also demands the act of Solidarity from the nations of the West. So that the year 1939 nor 1940 would not return.
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„Niedziela” 36/2014