She's chasing the truth

Resolution of 28 July 2023 (M.P. of 2023, item 855) The Polish Parliament established the year 2024 with Melchior Wańkowicz, 1 of the most prominent Polish journalists in history.

"He came to make at the age of cataclysms that our nation experienced, but besides in the era of the regained state and the reshaping of the Polish world. Describing him – with large strength of the reporter's talent – he witnessed, recounted, frequently on an ongoing basis, the destiny of the nation," was written in the justification.

However, this 50th anniversary of the death of Melchior Wańkowicz – a writer, journalist, father of Polish reportage – is celebrated someway unnoticed and modestly. Although there was a technological conference in Poznań entitled Wańkowicz unread, there is no resumption of His rich legacy! Journalists – mostly chasing inexpensive sensations and busy spreading propaganda – besides saw no reason to feed the incomprehensible (unless) author of fact literature to them. So it is glad that the Museum of Literature in Warsaw organized an exhibition of photographs from 3 incomplete albums submitted The Museum by Family.: ‘Melchior Wańkowicz. Photojournalist’. He did not part with the camera in order to save from forgetting the reality besides in the painting, and erstwhile the Red Army requisitioned it in Zaleszczyki in September 1939, he was able to get it back from a Russian officer, which was helped by the "Drozen Revolution".

Life

First, however, it is appropriate to remind the author of the more and more shadowing figure. Melchior Wańkowicz was born on 10 January 1892 in the Kalużyka property in Minsk. He was the boy of Melchior – a associate in the January Uprising, who had returned from exile respective years earlier and Maria from Szwoynicki and cousin of the artist Valentine's Day. (author of the well-known image of Adam Mickiewicz). However, he was raised by his grandma after a bath in the court of Nowotrzeby in the valley of the river Niewięża (her name is Lithuanians then someway went there) in Kowonszczyń, as he became an orphan at the age of two. He later described his childhood in “Happy Years”. The death of Felicia Szwoynicka's grandma in pre-Spring 1913 closed an crucial era, besides in His life. “The large land of past shortly began. It turned out that God knew what he wanted by sending death... The home in Nowotrabach and the life in it must have disappeared. It was built on life as if it were the life of its ecclesiastical, turbidity, and past. The home where crickets played wooden walls was not prepared for the times that are going. But the inhabitants of this home were beaten by destiny and pushed by life, they had in themselves a strength of resistance, a large perseverance, defeats they accepted as average manifestations of life, good luck—with concern or not being an immediate detached God for their good deeds—too insignificant to put them down until the reward in heaven. The people on the foundation of this home grew up, no substance what, believers then or not, carrying in the psyche of their dense scrap of rules, incapable to facilitate their lives, where they do not consent. Why? I don't know. Rules, dogmas, another intellectual structure have gone away" (M. Wańkowicz: ‘Happy Years’). Literary Publishing home Kraków 1989, pp.56 – 57).

In the gymnasium of Paweł Chrzanowski (now the 18th L.O. named after Jan Zamoyski) he joined the political activity of the subordinate National League of the Tri-Abortions of the “Pet” mediate School Youth Organization, in which he was secretary-general from 1909 to 1910 and presided over the legislature in 1910 in Krakow (previously participated in the 1905 school strike). However, his first public speech, as he said, took place as a child, erstwhile he left another children as a seven-year-old and arrived with a glass of champagne in a large hall, where they were pegged themselves Henryk Sienkiewicz. erstwhile the author got up, small Mel wished him a good wife, good children and good poems... In Krakow he studied law at the Jagiellonian University (which he finished in Warsaw after the war) and was able to complete the School of Political Sciences just before the outbreak of the large War. During the First War, he became a typical of the Central Citizen Committee of the Polish Kingdom for the evacuation of Poles from Russia. In 1918, as a soldier of the 1st Polish Corps, Gen. Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki (remarked the conflict Cross) was a witness to Kaluzyce household fire, where in the parkscape of the devastated manor there were cards from over 3,000 volumes of books. However, the treasures of the Bolshevik fat there did not find ("Epopei Straits")... From 1924 he was a co-releaser of the publishing office "The swarm", and the published publication was, among others, "The Piersy Revolution" (report from his stay in Moscow), "Sztafeta" (about the beginnings of industrial development, including the Central Industrial District), or the repeated study "On the Smuchka Trails" many times before the war. He wrote a book about the cruel persecution of Polishness left to himself by the Polish authorities (where do we know this?) after vacation trips 1935 with his younger daughter Marta after Warmia and Mazury (Eastern Prussia) and on the basis of correspondence with Polish activists in the 3rd Reich and consultations with experts of the subject (e.g. I'm Güertych, He thanked in the introduction to the book.

When appointed to him in 1939 as a war correspondent the site of the Warsaw Pancerno-Motor Brigade Colonel Stefan Rowecki In the burning Kurów turned out to be unknown, it reached the bombed Lublin. There on the German radio from Wrocław, he heard in Polish that they know that he is in Lublin "...but we will catch him with the way of Sumuk". With specified a position and awareness that Germany refused transit visas in 1938 His daughters who went to survey in England, got to Zaleszczyk in late September, and from there at night through Dniester under fire – to Romania. There, he hastily wrote, on the basis of only the accounts of participants of events (reportage of the report), the first shocking reports from the defensive war "without sources, with the only ambition to be as fast as possible to the false and bland at that time in September to argue the actual or close fact relation of the will to fight Poles" (from the introduction to the 1947 London edition of "September of Żagwiący", including the tragedy of the soldiers of the confederate Front at Lviv. As the only writer interviewed Marshal Rydziez-Śmigły and Minister Beck (in his book from “Stołków po Cairo”), he besides spoke with Major Henry Sucharski just before his death (Westerplatte). But he was not allowed to enter France, as he sought. respective years of further wandering through Cyprus, Palestine, Iran. Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, has resulted in in addition to the already powerful collection of reports in the volume “St. Aggressor September” (with the end of the communicative about the past of the Major’s branch “Hubal”), “De profundis” (about the past and martyrdom of Jews in the series by “Lands and Seas” dedicated to the past of the Zionist movement), or “Draws of the Koziewski family” about the gehenna of Poles exported into the USSR.

His destiny improved as he received the position of War correspondent of the 2nd Polish Corps, with whom he crossed the way to Egypt and then to Italy, where His opus magnum was created – ‘The conflict of Monte Cassino’ – an outstanding three-volume work of war study literature, dedicated to the heroism of Polish soldiers. In the country, it was torn from hands to hands and read by the release of the one-volume generation of my Father, and there was no end to discussions. In this constant pursuit of truth—and regardless of the consequences of its preaching and writing—after the end of the war, he issued a “Cundelism” flogging and mocking our megalomania—from 1 and complexes towards the West—on the another hand, and another national disadvantages, including circumstantial disadvantages (with their celebrated quintessence: “Six envied the canon that he was a prelate). Of course, it did not increase its popularity, on the contrary – it contributed to its decline. Even copies of the book “disgracing the Polish people” were burned... He besides visited Germany, France and Austria to live in London, and in the late 1940s both of them with their spouse Sophia (after more than six years of separation in Rome) left for the United States, where they lived with their daughter Marta (the older 1 Their daughter Krystyna died in the Warsaw Uprising). There the book “Poles and America” was created – about the contribution of Poles to the construction of the USA, which – as he emphasized – had already begun to make any Interepoke, leaving European culture. He besides published “Two” about the destiny of Polish emigration in Kandahar. He did not agree with the resolution of the legislature of Polish Writers on emigration of not writing to the country he missed.

He came to Poland for a fewer weeks in 1956 due to his sister's illness, and both Wańkowiczs returned permanently to Poland in 1958. His captured books were mainly published by the PAX Publishing Institute. Prewar advertising owes to him the slogan “Cucier stalwarts”, postwar: “LOT close”, but it is impossible not to mention “soup on the nail” (from a book about that title). He was a signatory of the celebrated letter 34 to the PRL authorities in 1964 against exacerbating censorship and for transferring its content to the West he was harassed and even arrested. After the suspension of 3 years of imprisonment in suspension (after amnesty reduced to 1.5 years) he wanted to service time with a toothbrush on his own respective occasions, but the prisons before him were already closed... In January 1964, he had a 3-hour conversation with Władysław GomulkaAfter which his book was released...

In the book “Weed on the crater” written on the emigration, he mentioned the poorness in which the Wańkowiczs came to live in the early 1920s, due to the fact that “the lava” consumed everything; however, life grew on the crater of her volcano. It didn't take 20 years for him to lose everything again and his daughter... Melchior Wańkowicz died in Warsaw on 10 September 1974.

Photographs uncover to readers the visual sensitivity of Wańkowicz... Among the collections of the Museum we separate and present 3 albums, each of which papers somewhat different reality and constitutes a closed, separate work. The photographs are an highly valuable historical source. They let the time and knowing of sociological and ethnographic backgrounds of 1937–1938 in Vilnius and Nowogródz Voivodeships of the Second Republic, in the autumn of 1956 Polish PRL, as well as the end of the Eisenhower era and the beginnings of the stone and rotation era in the United States. – the creators of the exhibition wrote.

The exhibition starts with photographs of her hero, including against the background of the conflict of Monte Cassino, household photos, including Krystina's daughters with long braids (connectors and paramedics of the ‘Parasol’ baron in the group ‘Radosława’). The first album entitled “North-East Borderlands II of the Republic of Poland” is the consequence of his long wanderings in Vilnius and Nowogródzki voivodship from 1936 to 1938 (a geographical Minsk region divided in 1921 by the Treaty of Riga) with the quote: “Every border has something amazing and mystical. due to the fact that it is the same land on the another hand, and so people live a different life.”

II Republic

Returning from Moscow, he wrote that the limit of the scratch "is as incomprehensible as death." Well, Poland was shrinking from the east, but did not want to shrink in the consciousness attached to lost lands – Poles. In 1 of the texts “Anoda and cathodes” he quoted the question of the carrier by Dniepr in Kiev in the beginning of the 20th century: “Nu czę barin, you chochet on Polish storon? And he added: “They say so besides at Oder.” The camera captured a country house, peasants, a female in a regional costume (unless close the Czarnotice Manor in Letieszyn), Orthodox clergymen, monks from the Monastery of the Sleeve of Our woman in Żyrowicz, country fun, accordionist, gravestone of an unknown woman, country road, marketplace with crowds, Jews, man with wooden leg, stone dedicated to J. Piłsudski in Belarusian, chapels close Volma, fair fair on St. Peter and Paul, doctor Pelican from the Widz area, who treats children with Jael illness (the "Kurier of the Ranny" of 16.01.1938 "The Pelikana of Dziadów takes care of peasant children), indulgence in Budsław, a series of photos of beggars at a relief in Budsław, soldiers of the Border defender Corps, including the welcome voivode of Vilnius Louis Bociański on this occasion, the procession, Lake Narocz – before the war, there are Polish fish connected with it, and fish – there are: the largest trees connected with it. Wańkowicz approached the russian border itself, where the closest to him was to Kalużyce and another border areas, including manors, where matters of Polishness and national tradition had a private dimension, although he was aware that it was already after the destruction... These photos are besides a Bezelar – a settler from Chocieńczyc surviving at the border wires themselves, an reflection tower close the Polish-Soviet border close Wolma, a military chaplain, a dog of the Wańkowiczs Gawel with the Mickiewicz sisters from Beinica ("Kurier Morning" – self-organized PCK). The photographs would most likely service as illustrations prepared in the typescript of the two-volume book on the Edges, but despite the writer's spouse's efforts, the typescript did not last the war...

Poland

"In August 1956, Wańkowicz came to Poland for the first time since September 1939, erstwhile he became a refugee, and after the end of the Second War – a political emigrant. Constantly focused on native subjects, he felt a deficiency of contact with the Polish and everyday life of his fellow countrymen. They are an unknown origin of information, documenting the facts and social sentiments of 1 of the landmark periods of the past of the Polish People's Republic – October 1956" – from a quote on the exhibition.

Within a fewer weeks, respective trips to Poland were made, including photos from Kielce, a procession with the image of Our woman of Czestochowa under the Jasna Góra monastery, the church, bishops and pilgrims and militias at the railway station there, but besides the celebration of GL in the parkczewski forests, including Hilary Chełchowski (one of the commanders of GL) with the parent of the fallen guards, are photos of Lublin: the Old Town, the Tatar District, the Castle Square (then the People's Square), the marketplace Square, the chapel in the niche of St Mark's Church, from Nowa Huta, the church of St. In Warsaw, he photographed the Śródmieście Railway Station, the historical figure of Our woman of Passawska in Krakowskie Przedmieście, the place of the execution of hostages, the monument of the Heroes of Gett, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the vicinity of the church of visitees, the Seym building, 6th Street of the Piwna Street – the then residence of Cata-Mackiewicz, Colonel Jan Mazurkiewicz ‘Radosław’, Other streets of Warsaw: including Tucholska 2-16 other the destroyed "house" of the Wańkowiczs, Małachowski Square, Central Commodity House, St. City Square, Powazkowski Cemetery with the insurgent office of the "Gustaw", collective graves of Polish and russian soldiers, collective grave of January insurgents after the conflict of Małogoszą, Bierut's grave, railway for meat, PKin against the background of ruins, party-government group (with the bald Prime Minister Cyrankiewicz's main role) during yearly harvests at the 10 Years Stadium, anti-radical flyers about the threat of military intervention, undermining the authoritative message of "military training" or plaque from the collection point of medicines for wounded Hungarians after russian intervention on their country.

There's a image of General Julius Rómml, photos of Anna Kowalski and Maria Dąbrowska, which, after reading her “Dear to the Official” and another publications, and then his lecture in the crowded legislature Hall called the Author Kiepura our literature (Diaries), Władysław Bronewski in the garden of his villa at Dąbrowskiego Street (before the war he lived close Wańkowiczów in Żoliborz), Witold Gielzyński. Reflecting on the pictures: “The communicative of the shrewd magpie enjoyed the circulation of human hearts alive. What will they do? They're alive before they die. End courts are dead. Their erstwhile residents are being escorted to the cemetery again and again by a thinning fistful in their broken covers. And around Poland the noise...

United States

In January 1957, the Wańkowiczs arrived in California at the invitation of respective institutions, including the Hartford Huntington Foundation. During this time, Wańkowicz worked on the alleged American triptych "In the footsteps of Columbus" (Atlantic – Pacific, Rabbit and oceans, In the belly of America). In the pictures we see mountain and sea landscapes, portraits of working people, images of children and mediocre people, animals (squirrels, crocodiles, raccoons), rocks of unusual shapes (Texas) and on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, houses entering the sea – as if attached rocks. There is simply a collection of plums under Saratoga Calif in Mexico and pictures of residents. The camera caught a cowboy sleigh after the ranch, crowds in rodeo stands, photographs in cowboy hats, dances, garden close the cottage, A cross commemorating a Franciscan missionary, Juniper Serra ( California).

The most interesting are the photographs of the Kres, but the incomprehensible and misleading is the information that Bolshevik soldiers shot the Wańkowicz dog erstwhile in Chełm he did not let them to destruct libraries, due to the fact that his owner's account shows that he learned about russian aggression erstwhile he was close Tarnopol (where he shortly met russian soldiers) and not to mention leaving Warsaw (for a short episode he was traveling with his wife) he did not compose about Gawle!

The exhibition was co-financed from the funds of the MKiDN and the Marshal's Office of Mazowieckie Voivodeship. It is worth watching the exhibition, which was extended until 31 January 2025 and it is worth to halt at its intersection with Rakowiecka Street, other the erstwhile cinema Moscow (which replaced the monsters of glass and steel) to read the contents of the memorial board placed on the outside of the balcony of the flat of this extraordinary creator.

Halina Ostovich

Think Poland, No. 3-4 (19-26.01.2025)