NATALIA, THE DAUGHTER OF CZESŁAW
GRZEGORZ GÓRNY
Natalia Niemen is an unusual person in the Polish show-business. She speaks about herself: ‘First I am the goddess of home, family, a housewife, wife and mother, and later an artist’. An autobiography edited by her (a long interview) ‘Heaven will be later’ shows her unknown image – a little girl brought up in the shadow of her famous father, a girl who was confused in her youth and finding the sense of her life in Christ. It is an image of a person for whom faith and family are far more important than career.
Szymon Babuchowski, who conducted an interview with the singer, persuaded her to share her personal reflections. They show a different image than the current imaginations about life of famous parents’ children are. It turns out that the fact of being a daughter of Czesław Niemen, became the source of continuous unpleasant things and troubles for little Natalia, for example, in a music school. For this reason she was treated by most teachers and students with jealousy as a non-talented child and was given unfair marks. She remembers that time even as a curse. Being still a student, she became the object of interest of tabloids, which wrote false stories about her alleged love affairs. In entertainment magazines she was called the worst anti-talent of the Polish pop music. Despite these alleged accusations, all this made her stronger to other attacks. So, when she was overwhelmed by a wave of hatred on Internet recently, as she had given a speech at a convention of the Law and Justice party, she did not get concerned by it. What is more, thanks to those attacks she was able to cling more to God in whom one finds peace and relief. An interesting thing presented in the book is the attitude of Czesław Niemen during the martial law. At that time he was criticized for supporting gen. Jaruzelski. However, in fact, he was unaware of being used by the communist apparatus of propaganda. It is worth reminding this issue as a lot of people have a false image of those events in their minds even today. Before 13 December 1981 Niemen had recorded a programme with his colleagues for TV, which was to be broadcast at Christmas. On that occasion he was interviewed when the martial law was implemented communists re-dismantled the interview, adding a special comment to it and showed it in the TV news. The programme seemed to present the singer legitimizing the warlords of Jaruzelski. For this reason, a lot of fans turned away from him. That incident made him feel down, especially that he was anti-communist. However, there was no way to expose the manipulation to the public, because all media were controlled by the authority. The most moving fragment of the book, however, concerns Czesław Niemen who had been in coma for 10 days before his death. His daughter says: Before a lot of our relatives die, they are in coma. I believe that this is a great grace from God. These are often people who were very harsh in their life, who were self-confident, believing in their abilities, not eager to get to know real God Father. I believe that such a coma is a gift that a man is absolutely dependent on God, on His grace. I believe that at this moment angels are surrounding this person and the Holy Spirit is speaking to him. Even medicine says that such people feel, hear and medical staff encourage ‘Please, sit down and talk. Dad hears’. We were told so. Natalia used the last moments at her dad’s bed in order to tell him that God loved him. She was reading the Gospel to him, singing psalms. She was telling him things which she had not been able to tell him before. She was apologizing. She was asking him for forgiveness.
Therefore, today Natalia Niemen encourages all people whose relatives are in coma to talk to their unconscious relatives at these moments and ask them to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Redeemer before their death. Maybe thanks to it, somebody will die as a worker of the last hour.
AA
„Niedziela” 48/2016