Diabolical!

Bishops' Nightmare!

 A new spectre is haunting Poland…the spectre of spectres!  Alas, no sooner had the country got rid of communism than an even greater danger has appeared - Halloween.  Polish bishops recently urged worshippers to ignore the festival because it “promotes harmful and diabolical behaviour.”

The poor old prelates face a more dreadful challenge.  The battle against communism was easy: there are no laughs in communism; there is no fun.  There is lots of fun and laughs in Halloween, which makes the danger all the more diabolical.  The archbishop of Warsaw, Kazimierz Nycz, said the festival went against the Church's teaching by promoting "the occult and magic". 

The truth is that Halloween, which has become increasingly popular in Poland in recent years, undermines the authority of a church that is becoming as literal-minded and humourless as the old communist oligarchy.

No word from the Vatican itself this year, silence perhaps being the best policy.  A few years ago the Holy See was warning parents not to allow their children to dress up, dismissing the festival as a celebration of ‘terror, fear and death.’ So, they are a bit worried then! The message went out in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, in a piece headed Halloween’s Dangerous Message.

So, what, one asks, is this ‘dangerous message’? Is Halloween not just about having fun and maintaining traditions, ancient traditions? No, it’s not; it’s riddled with a dark current of occultism and is “absolutely anti-Christian.”

Aldo Bonaiuto of the Church’s anti-occult and sect unit said that the event could spurn Satanic sects without scruples. “Halloween”, he continued “pushes new generations towards a mentality of esoteric magic and attacks sacred and spiritual values through a devious initiation to the art and images of the occult. At best it gives a helping hand to consumerism and materialism.”

Let me get this straight: Halloween initiates people into the occult and encourages materialism. So it seems to cover all angles!

No, I don’t take this silliness seriously from an organisation that not so long ago condemned the Harry Potter books and then in its fallibly infallible way changed its mind. Let’s strip away the Satanic nonsense.  Halloween or Samhain is simply an ancient Celtic festival marking the passage of the seasons, one celebrated in Christian and pre-Christian times. It has nothing to do with ‘trick or treat’ or Satanic cults and everything to do with casting light on a dark season.

But the desperation of the Church is understandable because it is largely of its own devising. It’s part of an ancient investment, it might be said, now bearing unexpected dividends. For, you see, I cannot think of a single Christian festival, major or minor, that was not based on the Church’s early usurpation of an older pagan holiday, from Ostara to Yule/Saturnalia. Even St Valentine’s Day was created around the festival of Lupercalia. Christmas Day itself is no more than the old Roman festival of Sol Invictus, the Sun God, whose birthday was celebrated on 25 December.

The simple truth is that as Christian faith falls away these old holidays re-emerge, have been re-emerging for years, partially in their original form, material and celebratory rather than spiritual and introspective.  So remember this when you see yet another jeremiad, as you inevitably will, bemoaning the ‘materialisation’ of Christmas. 

I have no idea how Polish Catholics received this latest piece of nonsense, but I rather suspect most will simply ignore it. People will continue to enjoy themselves, to have fun on Samhain or Saturnalia, without fear of the Archbishop of Warsaw, the Pope…or of Satan.

I had a good one.  I hope you did too.  

 ...Burn to me perfumes! Wear to me jewels! 

Drink to me, for I love you! I love you!
I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset;
I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky...

Battles then and battles now

The Hala Stulecia – Centennial Hall – is among the more noted of the architectural features of the Polish city of Wroclaw. It belongs to a different time, just as it once belonged to a different land. Designed by the architect Max Berg, it was constructed in 1913 in what was then the city of Breslau in Prussia, firmly part of the German Empire.

Prussia and the German Empire are long gone but the Hala Stulecia remains, one of the first buildings to make use of reinforced concrete and now a UNESCO world heritage site. Renamed the Hala Ludowa – the Hall of the People – when the communists controlled Poland, it was neglected for years before a partial restoration was carried out in the 1990s, at which time it returned to its old name.

Now a second restoration is underway which should be complete for the building’s own centennial in 2013. At this point history, never that far from Polish consciousness, has entered stage right. The centennial of the building might be all very well but people are focusing on the original centennial, the anniversary that it was built to commemorate, a cause of some national discomfort. For, you see, the Jahrhunderthalle, as it was originally called, was built to commemorate one of the great events in Prussian and German history – the War of Liberation.

It was in Breslau in March 1813 that King Frederick William III issued his famous appeal, An Mein Volk (To My People), addressed to both Germans and Prussians, the first such in the history of the Prussian royal house, calling them to rise up against Napoleon. It was here also that the order of the Iron Cross was established, here where the national colours of black, white and red were unfurled in that summer of destiny. As Roger Moorhouse said in a recent issue of History Today, all of this gives Breslau as much right as any to be considered as cradle of modern German nationalism.

This is where the problem arises. For when it comes to German nationalism the Poles, the only country in Europe to mention Napoleon in their national anthem, have particularly unhappy memories. So a little storm has blown up, with articles appearing in the national press accusing Wroclaw’s mayor of “excessive pro-German sentiment.” It has even been suggested that the director of the project, Dr Hana Cervinkova, a Czech academic, is ‘unhinged.’

I suppose this was all to be expected, not just because the hall marks a uniquely German event but because the War of Liberation did not bring liberation to Poland. Still there is far too much immaturity here. The Hall marks a great event in European History which, although it belongs to a German past, is part of a Polish present and a Polish future.

A story about a lie

Katyn is a movie not so much about the infamous wartime massacre of Polish officers by the NKVD, the Russian security service, as about a lie. It's about the 'little lie' that it was the Nazis and not the Soviets who were responsible for the crime, and it's about the 'big lie' that forced Poland and the Poles to deny the truth -or face the consequences - behind the event for decades after the war in the name of 'communist solidarity.'

Directed by Andrzej Wajda, one of the great figures of post-war Polish cinema, Katyn was premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007. So far as I am aware it has never been screened in this country. I only found out about it recently from an advert in the press, immediately sending away for the DVD on Amazon.

Now I've seen it and I'm so glad I've seen it. It's not an easy movie to watch for various reasons. There are too many themes, too much ambition of scope, which makes it somewhat plodding and incoherent at points. But it is no less powerful for this criticism. It's uncompromisingly Polish, in that the message it carries is clearly intended for a domestic rather than an international audience, no bad thing in my estimation.

Take but one small example. It's 1939; Poland is conquered, savaged from the west by the Germans and betrayed from the east by the Soviets; refugees flee from the west only to be turned back by refugees fleeing from the east. In their zone of occupation, one of the bones allotted to the Soviet dog by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Russians have rounded up thousands of officers, taking them away to an uncertain fate. A large group are shown held temporarily in a ruined monastery. Their commander addresses them in solemn terms. It is their duty to survive, he says - "Gentlemen, you must endure. Without you, there will be no free Poland."

Just consider the significance of this, the dual significance. These men did not survive; there was no free Poland, not for fifty years after the end of the war, which across the whole of Eastern Europe simply substituted one tyranny for another. No Pole would fail to recognise the symbolism here.

I thought the depiction of the actual crime, carried out in the spring of 1940 on the orders of Stalin, would be the central event of the movie. Wajda's far too clever for that: it comes right at the end for good reason. For, as I said at the outset, the movie is really about a lie and the truth only appears when falsehood is finally swept away.

Instead the action, both during and after the war, focuses in large part on those left behind; on the mothers, wives, children, sisters of those who have disappeared, people who, firstly, want to know where their sons, husbands, fathers and brothers are, and secondly, want to know the facts behind an unravelling tragedy, a truth partially told, more deeply obscured by a lie, one perpetuating the pain.

There continues to be a lot of anger in Poland, possibly less now over the massacre itself as the subsequent official line given out by the Soviet and Polish governments in the days of communist control. But Wajda, whose own father was among the victims, has resisted any temptation to make an anti-Russian diatribe.

The site of the massacre in Katyn Wood near Smolensk was discovered by the Germans in 1943, who immediately tried to use it for the ends of their own propaganda. Their 'sympathy' with these victims of communism stands in sickening contrast to their own conduct in Poland, which the director alludes to in his depiction of the 1939 Sonderaktion in Krakow, when the teaching staff of Jagellonian University were shipped off to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, there to be murdered. This was the Nazi Katyn, part of a wider attempt to exterminate the Polish elite.

The wife of one of the senior officers killed at Katyn has his medal returned to her by the Germans, with official expressions of sympathy from Hitler. She is then asked to take part in a propaganda broadcast, refusing to do so, recognising the ugly cynicism at work.

No sooner did the facts of the tragedy emerge than the Soviet denials began: they were not responsible; it was the Germans. This was the position they continued to maintain even so far as the Nuremberg Trials - where it was shamefully supported by the British government - and for decades after, until the full truth was finally admitted in the 1990s.

Part of the movie is concerned with the Poles who were forced to live in the shadow of a lie, including Agnieszka, played by Magdalena Cielecka, who, in the manner of Antigone, is obsessed with paying proper rites to her dead brother, with her attempts to erect a marble headstone in his memory bearing the true date of his death - April, 1940. A time, in other words, when only Poland's 'fraternal' ally could be blamed.

Katyn was the Calvary of modern Poland. Salvation was only found, as ever, in resurrection, in the resurrection of truth. This is a bold, uncompromising movie, an excellent depiction of a great tragedy. It's a victory over the lies, little and big, a great tribute to the director's father and all the other ghosts of Katyn, hopefully now at peace.

Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła,
Kiedy my żyjemy.
Co nam obca przemoc wzięła,
Szablą odbierzemy.

The Ghosts of Katyn Wood

Documents have finally been published that prove, once and for all, that Stalin personally authorised the murder of thousands of captured Polish officers at Katyn Wood and other places in 1940. I never had any doubt about this; I've read biographies of the man and know that nothing of importance in the old Soviet state ever happened without his authorisation. I also know that he personally signed many death lists during the Great Purge.

Still, this is an important development, not for a select band of scholars, who have long had access to the Russian archives, but for the public at large, for Poles in particular. For many years after the massacres the Soviet state was in denial about what happened, blaming the Germans, though they gave the lie to this assertion by refusing to allow the matter to be raised at the Nuremberg Trials of the major Nazi war criminals. Although a new openness began after the collapse of communism it has taken time for the full truth to come out, bound up as the question has been with issues of national pride. It proves once and for all that the assertion of people like Vevgeny Dzhugashvili, the tyrant's grandson, that he was somehow not personally responsible, is disingenuous in the extreme.

It comes at just the right moment, not long after the death of the Polish president, killed on his way to a commemorative ceremony. It's a welcome gesture by Dimitry Medvedev, the Russian president. One can only hope this is the beginning of a better understanding between the two nations, nations that have a long history of mutual animosity despite a common racial identity.

By any definition Katyn was a terrible crime, the massacre of close on 22,000 unarmed prisoners by the agents of the NKVD, the Soviet state security apparatus, the predecessor of the present MGB. One of the documents made public is a note by Lavrenty Beria, the head of the NKVD and one of Stalin's vilest henchmen, whom he once referred to in a joking mood as 'our Himmler.' In this he proposes that the Poles, who included priests, writers, professors and aristocrats as well as military officers, should all be shot. This particular document, which carries Stalin’s signature and a red 'top secret' stamp, is dated March 1940. There are other documents, coming after the Stalin era, showing that the Soviets were determined to keep the matter secret.

Responsibility was finally admitted by Mikhail Gorbachev only in 1990, when he expressed his 'profound regret', a bold gesture by the one decent man the communist state ever produced. But for history, for future generations, tangible proof is in every way better than expressions of regret, no matter how sincere. The ghosts of Kaytn can finally rest.

Truth Will Set you Free

The question of Poland and the Holocaust is a uniquely difficult one because all sorts of complicated issues are raised: that of Polish people towards the Jewish community in their midst, and that the post-war communist authorities towards the political significance of the Holocaust.

The official investigation into the Holocaust began with the setting up of a commission to gather evidence of war crimes, which included the Jewish Historical Institute (JHI), a body of independent historians. This was a time when Poland was not yet fully controlled by the communists, so some degree of openness and objectivity was still possible. Things changed from 1948 onwards.

In 1950 the JHI was placed under the control of the Ministry of Education, with all inquiry not approved of by the Party coming to an end. The new line was to stress the passive response of the Jews to the Nazis, while minimising Polish anti-Semitism and collaboration. It was said that the western emphasis on the persecution of the Jews had only obscured the persecution of the Poles. The official attitude towards the Jews was further modified by the emergence of the state of Israel. Now anti-Semitism was replaced by anti-Zionism; but both still drew on the traditional stereotype of the greedy, manipulative and exploitative Jew.

After Wladyslaw Gomulka came to power, following the 'Polish October' of 1956, old forms of Polish nationalism received at least a partial rehabilitation. This was accompanied by old anti-Semitism wearing new clothes. Jewish people were removed from their positions in both the army and the civil service, while at the same time an active press campaign was launched against all of those associated with the former Stalinist regime. The particular Jewish suffering associated with the Holocaust slipped even further into the background.

The political struggles of the 1960s saw the emergence of even more strident forms of anti-Jewish nationalism, most associated with the group around Mieczyslaw Moczar, notorious both for his xenophobia and his anti-Semitism. After the victory of Israel in the Six Day War of 1967 the position for Poland's dwindling Jewish minority became steadily worse, with all sorts of people being attacked for 'Zionist sympathies', whether they had them or not.

The whole programme embraced Holocaust history. Any and every attempt to define this as a uniquely Jewish event was denounced as "part of a chauvinist Zionist propaganda plot to justify the existence of Israel and turn the world against communism." It was, so it was said, a new "Jewish world conspiracy." In 1968 all the records of the JHI were taken over by the government. Subsequent to this a conference was held to "rebut the slanderous campaign of lies in the West...especially with reference to the accusations about the alleged participation of Poles in the annihilation of the Jewish population." By now the JHI had all but ceased to exist.

The fall of communism has been accompanied by a new openness; a willingness, at least by some, to confront uncomfortable truths; issues like the Jedwabne Pogrom and other matters touching on the relations between the Jewish and Catholic communities during the Holocaust. As a further indication of how things are changing I note from a recent report in The Economist that communist-era distortions are falling away and that for the first time the majority of Polish people see Auschwitz chiefly as a place where Jews were killed.

Class in Hate

I saw Our Class on Friday, a new play by Tadeusz Slobodzianek, presently being performed at the National Theatre here in London and running until January.

Set in Poland and following the passage through time of a group of school chums, Catholic and Jewish, Our Class is a ‘Holocaust play’ but not in the form that one might imagine. For it tells a story that many Poles would rather forget, did forget for many years: that Nazi anti-Semitism harmonised with an older tradition of hatred, one with deep roots in their country. By ever tightening circles of fear and hate the story moves through war and occupation to the Jedwabne Pogrom of July 1941, in which Jews were massacred not by Germans but by their fellow Poles.

Paradoxically this is a story that could only really be told after the demise of Communism and the emergence of the new Poland. Previously it raised all sorts of complicated issues: that of Polish people towards the Jewish community in their midst, and that of the post-war Communist authorities towards the political significance of the Holocaust.

The official investigation into the Holocaust in Poland began with the setting up of a commission to gather evidence of war crimes just after the conclusion of the war, which included the Jewish Historical Institute (JHI), a body of independent historians. This was a time when Poland was not yet fully controlled by the Communists, so some degree of openness and objectivity was still possible.

Things changed from 1948 onwards. In 1950 the JHI was placed under the control of the Ministry of Education, with all inquiry not approved of by the Party coming to an end. The new line was to stress the passive response of the Jews to the Nazis, while minimising Polish anti-Semitism and collaboration. It was said that the western emphasis on the persecution of the Jews had only obscured the persecution of the Poles. The official attitude towards the Jews was further modified by the emergence of the state of Israel. Now anti-Semitism was replaced by anti-Zionism; but both still drew on the traditional stereotype of the greedy, manipulative and exploitative Jew.

After Wladyslaw Gomulka came to power, following the 'Polish October' of 1956, old forms of Polish nationalism received at least a partial rehabilitation. This was accompanied by old anti-Semitism wearing new clothes. Jewish people were removed from their positions in both the army and the civil service, while at the same time an active press campaign was launched against all of those associated with the former Stalinist regime. The particular Jewish suffering associated with the Holocaust slipped even further into the background.

The political struggles of the 1960s saw the emergence of even more strident forms of anti-Jewish nationalism, most associated with the group around Mieczyslaw Moczar, notorious both for his xenophobia and his anti-Semitism. After the victory of Israel in the Six Day War of 1967 the position for Poland's dwindling Jewish minority became steadily worse, with all sorts of people being attacked for 'Zionist sympathies', whether they had them or not. The whole programme embraced Holocaust history. Any and every attempt to define this as a uniquely Jewish event was denounced as 'part of a chauvinist Zionist propaganda plot to justify the existence of Israel and turn the world against Communism.' It was, so it was said, a new 'Jewish world conspiracy.' In 1968 all the records of the JHI were taken over by the government. Subsequent to this a conference was held to 'rebut the slanderous campaign of lies in the West...especially with reference to the accusations about the alleged participation of Poles in the annihilation of the Jewish population.' By now the JHI had all but ceased to exist.

The fall of Communism has been accompanied by a new openness; a willingness, at least by some, to confront uncomfortable truths, including the truth of Jedwabne and other matters touching on the relations between the Jewish and Catholic communities during the Holocaust.

The play itself is a remarkable if not entirely comfortable experience. It’s long, three hours long, so it requires stamina on more level than one. The ensemble, only ten strong, are utterly convincing as they move through the childhood and dreams of the 1920s to the adulthood and nightmares of the 1940s. All the performances are memorable but for me the outstanding one was that of Sinead Matthews as Dora, who dreamt of being a film star only to end by being burned alive with her baby and some 1600 other people in a barn. It’s stark; there are no visual distractions; much of the horror is conveyed by mime. More than anything the play is effective as a kind of accusation, delivered from the past to the present.

There aspects of the past that I think we would all wish to forget, not just the Poles. But remembrance is, after all, a human duty.