- I didn't go to Chechnya, Afghanistan out of curiosity about war or out of curiosity about what another people's suffering looks like. I did not go there to experience any trauma, my own individual one, due to the fact that that is not the function of a writer either," said Wojciech Jagielski.
- A war correspondent reported that his wife had suffered PTSD. She paid a advanced price. I felt very sorry for her,” he added.
- Fear was the most crucial companion of the journey. I listened very much to what he had to say. I think I would be very worried, even terrified, if I always realized that he was not with me, says the reporter
- More crucial information can be found on the Onetu homepage
Marcin Zawada: How many wars did you report?
Wojciech Jagielski: I don't know. I helped her figure it out erstwhile for my wife's book. But it doesn't should be that exact number. It was, like, 53 trips in a sense involving wars. Either they were trips due to wars or to places where these conflicts grew. Where the shots were fired. That's what I would call it.
Do you remember your first journey to a place like this?
I think it was South Ossetia and it was the early 1990s. Very early start. due to the fact that I was very fortunate as a journalist, as a abroad correspondent. Firstly, due to the fact that the first country I went to was Georgia, and this is the most pleasant country for a beginner journalist. Not only due to the gabarites, but due to specified openness, even due to the Georgians' pushiness. There's nothing to ask due to the fact that Georgia's talking about itself.
Secondly, I was lucky, possibly even bigger, that this first war was the confederate Ossetian one. It started back in the time erstwhile the russian Union existed and was conducted by specified a hoarding method. There were more beaten and wounded than dead. It was conducted in specified a way that I would say, humanitarian, as if it did not sound, talking about war. It was a hand-to-hand war. They didn't shoot each another with guns...
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This is simply a completely different war than the 1 we are observing present in Ukraine.
Absolutely. This war was more like a village riot after playing in a firehouse than an armed conflict. That's the kind of weapon they used. And I felt like it was specified a mild introduction to these wars. The first conflicts I saw were wars in the South Caucasus, even before the dissolution of the russian Union, before the looting of these russian garrisons. due to the fact that erstwhile the russian Union broke up, the russian army ceased to exist, it was all privatized. Not only oil fields and companies, but besides garrisons. And that weapon ended up in the hands of those who wanted to fight and then started firing device guns.
This war lost any humanitarian dimension, due to the fact that it was then that the mark was shot, not the man. individual who is watched from a half a mile distant is simply a figure to be pointed at, and erstwhile you gotta kill him with a knife or hit him with a club, you see a face. You see this man. He may even fall upon the 1 who causes him death.
And these wars, erstwhile the weapon was already used, they didn't scare you? Compared to the first wars you saw?
Maybe it's not a good comparison, but I was kind of being introduced step by step. I was just getting utilized to it. The first 1 was completely more anecdotal than dangerous, and the second 1 was a small more dangerous. And then more and more. If you are not thrown into the deep water in which you will either drown or learn to swim, you are tamed in the mildest way. It was my way. Well, possibly it's not, due to the fact that the way it's meant to be, someone's come up with something. It just happened. I was fortunate to be introduced step by step.
And why did you even start going to places where there was either an armed conflict or where the armed conflicts broke out?
I chose this area of my journalistic research. It wasn't war, God forbid. If I had chosen Canada alternatively of Africa or Japan alternatively of the South of the russian Union, which had spread to all Central Asia. My boss, Michał Czarnecki, from the Polish Press Agency, made this choice for me. If I had made another choice, I'd most likely never compose about any war. due to the fact that Japan and Canada are fortunate to have no war on them. And I wouldn't regret it. But I chose Africa. I chose Central Asia, in which I fell in love with another, but possibly more true. And I thought this was a tied deal.
I am a journalist, and the writer tells the most crucial things. There's no more crucial thing to tell like war. This journalism has become far more than just a way of making money or a way of spending my professional time. It rapidly became my life. The problem truly was whether I live or live as I live and as I like it, or I gotta find another life. We decided due to the fact that it wasn't just my decision. It was a household decision that I would effort to prosecute this journalism profession and do so as my conscience tells me.
Like today, erstwhile you no longer ride armed conflicts, you close your eyes and hear the word of war. What's the first, second, 3rd image you have in your eyes?
Every time I think of refugees, they remind me. War for me is the complete demolition of something that existed and in which there was a average life. The way we can imagine a average life. So these are burning houses, these are caravans of cars, carts, filled with any belongings, crying people or specified extinct abandoned towns, from where everyone fled before the war. War is the fall of all standards. It's a reversal of order. War is not just permission, it's praise for killing. You can't kill. It's not just the law that forbids it. The commandment in all religion forbids killing. but the war. In war, you gotta kill, you gotta kill.
Beata Zawrzel/Reporter / East NewsWojciech Jagielski
Every war means approval and encouragement to kill. not only to kill, but to rape, to steal, to do everything in the average world, average life is forbidden. possibly that's why she's so tempting. 1 can sin not only without fear of punishment, but 1 can anticipate praise, general degree, monetary reward, title of folk hero. That's all war offers. Tempted, says you'll be a hero, but you gotta sin. This is war. This is the worst thing I've always seen. And I wouldn't regret it if I hadn't met it all.
Post-traumatic stress clinic
How did you respond to all this? How did you deal with that? With these paintings, with the cruelty you've seen for so many days in your life?
There's no method. How did I deal with that? Why didn't I end up where my traveling companion Krzysztof Miller ended up, which is simply a post-traumatic stress clinic? That's where my wife ended up. And there, erstwhile I told about the case of Krzysztof Miller, another good friend of mine, a photojournalist, who I besides worked with, came forward. I've never had the request to heal myself. individual told me at the clinic about the task force. I'm sorry if I'm ignorant about this. possibly whoever said that was ignorant too. Well, this task personality was expected to be that I was able to concentrate entirely on the task, not calling it suffering, cruelty, something terrible.
It was my occupation to be a journalist. That's all I went there for. It's not like I went to Chechnya, Afghanistan out of curiosity about war, or out of curiosity about what another people's suffering looks like. I didn't go there to experience any trauma, my own individual one, due to the fact that that's not the function of a writer either. A reporter has a occupation to do, he's sent to do something, a job. I did this job, I could separate.
It just happened in a very spontaneous way. I had this trait that saved me from these traumas. individual else didn't. Christopher Miller and I did about the same thing. Same place we were. The difference was that I wrote it, told it, he photographed it.
This is besides an crucial difference, due to the fact that in the clinic, the first procedure, or the first method of therapy, is that the patient should tell about the suffering of his soul. I talked about it forever. I told in articles, later in current correspondence, later in reporting, I told in books. Before I wrote it, I thought about it. I called things by name due to the fact that I was looking for good terms. I told my wife first at home. For respective reasons, she was the first reviewer of all my stories. But I besides told her everything I saw in this war and what could have happened to me so that she would know everything. If she's to be afraid, she's to be afraid of something real, not fear that has large eyes.
Wife's disease
It was the wife who paid the highest price in your relationship.
She's the 1 who got the illness that's expected to be mine. She ended up in a hospital, the same 1 where Krzysztof Miller and another journalists landed. Well, yeah, she kind of paid. It's a advanced price. I felt very sorry for her, just like you feel sorry for your nearest sick person.
She didn't go to the conflicts, she ended up in that clinic, not you who was there and saw it.
Yeah, yeah, sometimes we laughter that possibly that's how realistic I was telling her about the war and the plasticity that I made myself a reporter and literary style, and that's why she ended up in the hospital.
Rafal Oleksiewicz/Reporter / East NewsWojciech Jagielski and his wife
Would you do that today? Wouldn't you tell your wife all this?
I don't really know if I'd do the job. I surely wouldn't hazard knowingly exposing my wife to the same thing. Wives, sons, due to the fact that the illness went to her wife, but it might as well have happened to 1 of her sons. I think I would find myself in this journalism any another plane in which I would be perfectly fulfilled as a journalist, without any remorse. And it wouldn't be war-related. I'm certain it would should be a passion, due to the fact that I'm passionate about that journalism.
I imagine myself perfectly writing reports about sports, football, not results, but about the phenomenon itself, for example football. Well, 1 female wouldn't have avoided that it would inactive be my passion, and I wouldn't be home, and I'd be busy working. This absence, seemingly trivial, has various faces, but prolonged besides long means discord. It's uncommon to share a passion with someone, rather, to be jealous of themselves. And erstwhile you get a passionate partner in life, you get a hard life, you get a passionate one, and that individual who doesn't share that passion with him.
This house, this household was crucial to you in times of hardship. There, on one, the other, the 3rd armed conflict, you thought of your home, your loved ones, and that gave you strength?
It was a kind of amulet, a regular like that, a order of words, behavior... I've always liked to hear goodbye from my wife so I wouldn't worry about anything, that all I leave behind would be perfectly taken care of. I just couldn't be burdened with anything else. All I could have had was this journalism in front of me and just facing it.
Rafal Oleksiewicz/Reporter / East Newsgathering promoting the book Grażyna Jagielska
Many of your colleagues, your friends, whom you met in different places of the world, at conflicts, took their own lives.
Not that many. But a fewer have. But it's not due to the fact that they were journalists. It's uncommon that at least the origin of suicide is one. It's usually a combination of various terrible coincidences, events, individual features, addictions. And then there's this moment, this last minute that pushes and says individual took their own life due to the fact that something happened at the last minute. But this is just the last moment, and I think that this point of the abyss is coming a long time, and there are many reasons that force this march over the abyss in a sense.
Alcohol and another substances
You've touched your addiction. Sometimes in literature or in movies, erstwhile the communicative of war correspondents is told, alcohol plays a large function as what gives peace there on the spot...
I'm certain he's showing up in large quantities. And I think it's an effective remedy to stress. In the long run, it's not a cure. Of course, utilizing them besides long, regularly or in excess, it is easy to become addicted very quickly. I've never tried a drug more effective than drugs.
Maybe due to the fact that I was born besides late. I missed that culture, even marijuana. I wouldn't know how to handle it. And then there's the twists and the dense drugs and the alcohol. Everyone tries to relieve stress in the way he thinks best. I'm certain a fewer people respond by sitting in a lotus meditating. It takes more time and possibly a small different mood. And you'll find yourself in a bar with any friends you can talk to about it, and no 1 else can. Drink two, 3 deeper. I think it's about that kind of relaxation.
“I have always been accompanied by fear”
When you read your correspondence from different places in the world, whether in Gazeta Wyborcza or in the Polish Press Agency, there was always 1 question about me, what is this man afraid of? What is fear to you? What was fear to you erstwhile you went to all those different places in the world?
He was the most crucial traveling companion. I listened very much to what he had to say erstwhile he showed up. I think I'd be very worried, terrified, if I always realized he wasn't with me. It was a small self-preservation. erstwhile there was fear, I knew there was something to focus on. We request to look around. A man who doesn't feel fear is someway crippled. He is impoverished for the deficiency of this trait, this trait. With a man who doesn't feel fear, fear crosses the street. I'd be afraid to work with individual like that. I'd be afraid to hang out with individual like that, have anything to do with it.
Marek Lasyk/Reporter / East NewsJerzy Illg, Wojciech Jagielski, Timothy Garton Ash
I truly appreciated that fear. Not just my own, due to the fact that even if mine was more dormant sometimes, I took it very seriously erstwhile individual in my company started to fear more. erstwhile I checked, I frequently thought he was right. And if I felt that he was wrong, that was the fear that had the large eyes, then it was besides good to check to get back to that safety condition. I can't imagine surviving without fear.
Have you always had a situation like this due to the fact that you've traveled with photojournalists? Christopher Miller, who we've already talked about. He must have been close to taking a picture. There are any correspondents who are far from data and places. They just describe what they heard. You were very close to various dramatic, tragic situations. You utilized to have this minute erstwhile you thought it was over. We're not leaving here, are we?
I don't think so. However, these moments of danger occurred rapidly. I think they happened faster than any thought, any reflection. I was active in 2 car accidents with Krzysztof, from which we should not leave live, but at the minute that accident was already over, I knew that I survived. Even in the most dangerous situations erstwhile they were, the ones that got into my memory the most. These were the ones that lasted longer than the blink of an eye. That's one.
And secondly, erstwhile I was aware, it was even rarer. It's fortunate that those shots are fired, that individual is shooting at me not due to the fact that I'm there with a group of journalists and there are soldiers from any hostile army. And that I just happened to get into a shooting. And I'm not the target, only erstwhile I realize it's shooting at me. And a fewer times it was, and it was an experience that made me think about the meaning of these journalistic expeditions.
When the intent of this journey is put together, for example, to find out where, how the last line of the front is going and who is in charge of it, these posts hold... and then for checking it and for that cognition could be paid with life... It doesn't have the weight to put it on. We never took any risks. We were doing things possibly from a further position crazy, but we never took a conscious risk. And it came so close to see if it could go on, whether it was this or what we're watching, that's what... Is this the war?
