“Poles are idiots!”

“What are poor people going to do?”

Last October, just days after Poland’s most recent parliamentary elections, I listened as my craggy-faced 83-year-old father angrily shouted these words through the phone receiver in his apartment on the outskirts of Kraków. He and my mother were both distraught. Their party, the populist, right-wing Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, or PiS) of Jarosław Kaczyński had just lost its majority.

For Poland’s last three parliamentary elections, my parents have put on their Sunday best and exercised their democratic right to vote by opting to support PiS. Yet simultaneously, the party has eroded key pillars of the very system that granted them that fundamental right. As historian Brian Porter-Szűcs has summarized in the Globe Post, since PiS first took power in 2015, it has “transformed the state-run media into a propaganda mouthpiece, purged the civil service, strengthened partisan political control over state-run businesses, and above all, eliminated the independence of the judiciary.”

While it’s tempting to reduce my parents—and the 7.6 million others, 35% of all Polish voters, who voted for PiS—to uninformed right-wing zealots, such simplification lacks empathy and further marginalizes these individuals. Instead, it’s important to understand the roots of PiS support—which for many people, including my parents, is deeply embedded in their experiences of communism and the country’s transition to a capitalist economy in the 1990s.

Born during World War II in poor working-class families, both of my parents were shaped by the Polish People’s Republic. Like most Poles, they never engaged in political struggles for or against the communist regime. Rather, socialism gave him and my mother opportunities they could not have dreamt of without it. They became a classic example of social mobility in postwar Poland.

Between the early 1960s and late ’70s, with no money or higher education, they moved to the vibrant city of Kraków, secured decently paying jobs, acquired an apartment with a modest down payment, had access to free health care and free education for their child, and could afford most there was to be afforded.

There were shortages, but the sausage for which they queued for hours, often at night, tasted much better, they say, than any of the things they have access to in abundance today. There was no real chocolate and no bananas, no nice clothes and no fancy perfumes, but this lack was equally distributed: They did not have things, but their bosses didn’t have them either.

To this day, my parents remain grateful for those years. So when the PiS government rose to power in the mid-2010s, it offered a vision that seemed rooted in the socialist economic order they remembered fondly. (Unlike the Republican Party in the U.S., Polish conservatives like PiS do not embrace libertarianism, but instead campaign on populist economics of fair distribution of wealth. One of my dad’s main arguments in support of PiS has been its “500 plus” policy, which gives families 500 Polish Zloty, around 130 USD, per child every month.) Most importantly, the party addressed my parents’—and millions of other voters’—anger at the unfulfilled promise of capitalism and democracy.

In 1989, when the ruling communist party was abolished, my parents were both 50 years old, a stay-at-home mom and a white-collar professional. In other countries, people their age might be eagerly looking toward retirement. But for my parents and millions like them, turning 50 meant the end of the only world they knew.

The initial exhilaration of political change and freedom quickly gave way to anxiety and fear over employment, money, and the future. The “shock therapy” policy imported from the United States brought about such a rapid transition from a socialist planned economy to a neoliberal capitalist regime that there was a widespread loss of employment: For instance, my father’s state-run company was closed, taking with it his job. He witnessed the rampant corruption of rapid privatization with wild takeovers and fortunes amassed overnight by the shrewd, the lucky, and often the unscrupulous.

My parents did not lose their spirit. They dreamt the big dreams of storied capitalism. They applied for an alcohol license to run a small beer wholesale company. I will never forget how they danced, cheered, and celebrated the day it was granted, our little apartment bursting with hope and joy. In 1991, they opened the business.

But without capital or training in ruthless business acumen, they were destined to fail. After three years, they went bankrupt, left with huge debts and bailiffs knocking on the door. My mom fell into a depression. My dad struggled to make sense of it all.

That was how the great historical moment of transitioning from socialism to capitalism played out for our small family and millions like ours.

For the next 20 years, my parents aged while watching Poland make its phenomenal ascent “into the West” as an Eastern Bloc economic tiger. Neighbors moved out to nice villas further in the city outskirts. Beautiful cars appeared in front of our shabby apartment building. Well-stocked supermarkets mushroomed, killing familiar small neighborhood stores.

In turn, they felt more and more isolated and aggrieved. Receiving pensions of 250-300 USD per month, they felt that the new, democratic Poland had left them by the wayside—and that the liberal governments did not care for or about them.

Then came PiS, speaking directly to the core of my parents’ discontent. The party offered the millions of Poles barely surviving on minimum pensions and wages simple imagery of those who got poor and those who got rich at the poor’s expense. They used an easily digestible vernacular of good and evil, enemies and heroes, patriotism and treason, in the relentless propaganda of public TV. They promised to hunt down the thieves and weed out corruption. They manipulated retirees’ religious devotion and their discomfort with rapid, left-leaning changes. They spoke of “us”—villages and small towns, or what the liberals disparagingly called “Poland B”—versus “them”—corrupt elites.

In all their demagogic nonsense, there was always a kernel of truth that my parents could use to justify their support: corruption. We all knew it was a real problem. The 1990s privatization process was rife with criminality. The wealth gap was growing. The PiS promised to “cleanse” the society of all these ills. If democratic institutions got destroyed in the process, so be it.

But the tide has changed with a record-breaking 74% of eligible Polish voters turning out in an election that ousted PiS from power. Now my parents are worried. They fear that the benefits they received under the PiS government—increased monthly pensions, additional annual payments, and an expanded list of free medications—will be revoked.

Will their fears come true? Will the new government ignore them, and millions like them?

Given that so many of my parents’ generation are in desperate need of assistance, I hope not. Beyond addressing their obvious material needs by increasing minimal pensions and lowering medical expenses, I hope that the new regime understands that it is important to respect them for who they are. Their limited education, socialist nostalgia, and elderly religious devotion should not relegate them to a marginalized social status, akin to a disparaged “Poland B.”

Already there are promising signs: A new state budget for 2024 has maintained additional annual payments for pensioners. The new Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, has reassured PiS voters that no previously existing benefits will be “taken away” from them. He has also repeatedly stated that his government will respect and care for all citizens, not just his constituency.

Two and a half months after the elections, even my parents have taken note. My dad surprised me recently when he said that he feels that the country is going in the “right direction.” I hope that the new government will continue to craft its rhetoric and policy with compassion to allow my parents and others dignity in the twilight of their lives.

The post Why My Parents Backed Poland’s Far-Right Party appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

On a blustery day in early October 2023, half a dozen volunteers stood outside a street market in Łódź, Poland’s fourth largest city, handing out flyers, stickers, and cherry cakes. We were campaigning for Aleksandra Wiśniewska, a 29-year-old former humanitarian aid worker and political novice, who was running for parliament from the Civic Coalition (KO) list, the largest Polish opposition party. I was her campaign manager.

Unexpectedly, Zbigniew Rau, the Polish foreign minister and a member of the nationalist-conservative ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), appeared. He interrupted the event and started a shouting match with several other opposition candidates campaigning at the market. Instead of engaging in the melee, Wiśniewska turned her back and firmly spoke to a camera held up by a volunteer.

“Poland deserves a real foreign service. Our ruling party does not represent us,” she said.

Within minutes, the video—uploaded online with the caption “#bazaardiplomacy”—had garnered hundreds of thousands of views.

Just a week later, Polish voters overwhelmingly backed the opposition in the historic elections, ending eight years of PiS rule. The turnout of more than 74 percent smashed all previous records. Ten percent more people voted than during the first partially free elections in 1989, when Poles ended communism at the ballot box. This election compares in significance: It was a case study of how a highly motivated and well-organized opposition can win, even against a ruling party that cheats. For that reason, it deserves to be better understood around the world.

For the past eight years, PiS has eroded media freedoms and undermined judicial independence, moving the country towards authoritarianism. Despite the opposition’s win, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) noted that “the ruling party and its candidates gained a clear advantage from the misuse of state resources,” meaning that the election was fought on a “tilted playing field”: taxpayers’ money donated by state companies and newly created “foundations” was used to back the ruling party. State-run media, the only broadcast media available in parts of the country, was more than biased. It has been turned into a Goebbelsian propaganda machine that twisted and manipulated video and spewed hatred against the opposition, minority groups, and civil society organizations.

PiS had also passed a series of restrictive laws, including an abortion ban so drastic that women with problem pregnancies died because they were refused abortions that would have saved them. A nationwide women’s strike followed: for many younger women, participation in that march was their first experience of politics. Polling data from election day strongly suggest that young and female voters, many of whom had not voted in the past, propelled the opposition to victory. Four years ago, only 46% of voters under 29 voted; this year, over 68% did.

The success of Wiśniewska—now the youngest woman MP in the parliament—was part of this change. Our team was entirely made up of young people in their 20s. None of us had been involved in Polish politics before. Despite our lack of experience and despite starting from a lower position on the party’s list of candidates, Wiśniewska received more support than four sitting MPs. We showed voters how an innovative, grassroots, and energetic campaign can change the political arena.

Three strategies enabled our success.

The first strategy was our team. Wiśnewska has charisma, international experience, and a compelling story, but the campaign was not only about her. We knew that our potential electorate consisted of many open-minded, young, and curious people who were looking for someone to vote for, but perhaps felt they had been overlooked by politicians or parties. We featured photos, ideas, and profiles of our team members in our online communications.

When we went to early morning markets or stood on street corners handing out flyers, we always went as a team. We spent countless hours on the streets, talking to people, proving that democratic engagement isn’t boring. At our events, we brought together musicians, artists, and other young experts to talk about issues in Polish society. Our idea was to talk about things that younger people care about, and by doing so, show that Wiśniewska was part of a greater movement of younger people who were daring to take the first step into the world of politics. We think that we succeeded because this was true: we were all committed to changing politics and we think we transmitted that commitment to people.

Our second strategy was to stay positive and patriotic.

PiS ran a remarkably nasty campaign. The day we announced Wiśniewska’s candidacy we made national news when PiS media accused our candidate of falsifying her entire life story, as well as insinuating that she was not a “real Pole.” Our social media was inundated with hateful messages. Some particularly aggressive people stopped us on the street, calling us frauds or Germans. But we knew politics would be dirty, and before the campaign started, we had created a social media campaign encouraging young people to be brave and get involved in politics.

We stuck to our strategy, proudly wore Polish flags, didn’t engage in shouting matches, didn’t reply to trolls, and didn’t dwell on the negative campaign of the ruling party. Instead, we focused on our values, urging our voters to vote not based on political promises that particular campaigns made, but based on what kind of people they wanted to represent them in parliament. For us that meant people who promote hope, responsibility, and kindness. We laughed and smiled through every campaign event, emphasizing personal conversations with voters over large rallies. Once again, this succeeded because it was real: We were enjoying ourselves.

Only once, when a prominent PiS activist shared racist memes implying our candidate was in a Russian pornography film, did we retaliate. We went straight to court, and within a week won a defamation case against the activist who had to publicly apologize. We found this was the most impactful way to deal with hate—by standing up for your values and for decency through established checks and balances.

The third strategy is perhaps the most obvious. But bizarrely, it was the one which so many Polish political campaigns lacked.

In order to convince people to vote for you, you have to reach them where they are. And every single young voter is online. We built an around-the-clock social media presence on every platform—Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube.

We also took advantage of micro-targeted online advertising. Understanding that voters are different also means that you are forced to consider what different groups may need. Campaigns can send different messages—or the same message in different ways—to voters depending on their age, gender, income, neighborhood, or what they like on Facebook. We leveraged publicly available data about historical voting patterns to target particular areas with specific messages. It’s common sense too. Your message and tone to young people attending a music festival is going to differ from your message and tone to older voters and small businesses at an early morning bazaar. On the street, this tone shift is so obvious it is automatic. But it needs to happen online, too, and it allows you to more effectively convince voters that you have the ideas and values that can enact positive change.

Over the next year, voters go to the polls in India, Venezuela, Georgia, and Mexico, all countries run by authoritarian populists. In each of them, young people who want something different will be fighting incumbent parties that tilt the playing field, cheat, or steal elections. In the United States, the incumbent president is not an authoritarian, but in many states, younger, democratic candidates are also fighting in conditions that aren’t as different from Poland as many Americans imagine. They will work inside gerrymandered systems, fight off vicious smear campaigns, and face consistent media bias.

Winning in these conditions is difficult, but as the election in Poland shows, it is not impossible. Success comes more readily to campaigns that look like a team and work like a team, that project a positive message in an overwhelmingly negative atmosphere, and that make full use of the tools available to them.

The post How Poland’s Opposition Won an Unfair Election appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

At long last, we reached the wall. Its glinting metal and sharp wire stood in stark contrast to the greens and golds of the Polish forest in autumn. And its towering presence transported me to another wall: the tall steel pillars that stretch into the Pacific Ocean dividing San Ysidro and Tijuana. As a long-time immigrants’ rights lawyer in the United States, I traveled 6,000 miles to Poland’s contested border with Belarus only to be struck by how familiar it all felt: the walls, the violence, the humanitarian resistance.

Walls and other ways of turning away asylum seekers are long entrenched at the U.S.-Mexico border, but are relatively new in eastern Poland. In May 2021, Belarus’ authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko began encouraging migrants from the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere to come to Minsk, his country’s capital, to facilitate their crossing into Poland. His policy was politically calculated to provoke the European Union, which had imposed sanctions on Belarus following Lukashenko’s corrupt reelection in 2020. And it worked.

The Polish government initiated violent “pushbacks,” forcibly returning migrants to the Belarusian side without assessing claims to humanitarian protection and in violation of international law. That practice has deep echoes of Title 42, the United States’ version of a pushback policy cloaked as a public health order, which has slammed the door to migrants seeking asylum at our own border for nearly three years. The similarities don’t end at the border wall and pushbacks, either. Like the U.S., the Polish government reserves its aggressive treatment primarily for Black and brown migrants. Indeed, while a wall was erected to the north, Poland welcomed millions of Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s war just to the south.

On a sunny morning in October 2022, I set out for the Białowieża Forest, a UNESCO World Heritage site renowned for its ecological beauty, and the heart of the Poland-Belarus borderland. My professional and personal interests in the region intertwined; my own family’s forced migration began at Poland’s eastern border at the dawn of World War II. In these dense forests, where Jews once hid and were massacred by the Nazis, I wanted to see and understand the plight of today’s migrants for myself.

Colleagues from the University of Warsaw’s Centre of Migration Research picked me up at the tiny train station in the eastern town of Hajnówka. They had packed their car with homemade jars of soup, which we delivered to a base operated by Grupa Granica (“Border Group”), an activist association formed last summer in response to the crisis. The base felt eerily familiar, like the shelter for people seeking asylum I had visited just months before in San Diego, with rooms full of boxes of clothing neatly sorted by size, sleeping bags rolled up in piles, and bins of packaged food.

Word arrived shortly that two men from Sudan, one with a cut on his belly, needed food and medical care; two volunteers packed rucksacks and headed out to help. They hoped to find the migrants before dark. They do not use flashlights for fear of alerting law enforcement—Border Guard, Polish Army, Police, and Territorial Defense Forces—which now patrols for migrants to push back and humanitarian aid workers to prosecute.

After the activists headed out, we did too, in search of the border wall. We hiked for several miles along Browka Road, a muddy way that until last year was limited to environmental preservation vehicles. A large Polish army truck pulled alongside. Officers questioned us and let us go, then drove back and forth several times, keeping watch, as we crisscrossed gray ponds—the width of tires carved by army tanks—where dead frogs floated.

The border wall’s “glinting metal and sharp wire” in the distance. Courtesy of author.

We finally reached our destination, and I was transported to that other wall stretching into the beauty of the Pacific Ocean. Unlike the weathered red-brown barrier that divides California from Mexico, which was erected 30 years ago, the Polish wall’s silver shines. Still, both are man-made borders, glaringly artificial in contrast to the natural world flowing continuously around and beneath them.

While the border wall felt artificial, its grave human consequences did not. I spent the night at an eco-lodge rented out at a discounted price to Badaczki i Badacze na Granicy (“Researchers at the Border”). There, I talked late into the night with Natalia Judzińska, a Holocaust scholar who uses visual methodologies to document migrants’ journeys. Judzińska photographs places where migrants have built hideouts, had violent run-ins with law enforcement, or (if they are lucky) left their warm clothing behind to travel onward by car, often to Germany. These photographs—of piles of discarded clothes, personal objects left behind—create a visual connection between Poland’s past and present; one that she argues informs how Polish scholars and activists are responding to the current crisis.

That day, Judzińska had discovered a pile of documents from a Syrian man—identity card, vaccination records, a medical diploma, family photographs, two stamps—strewn on the ground. She photographed and carefully collected the documents, with hopes of returning them to their owner. Having worked with countless people seeking refuge, I knew just how precious such belongings are—not only as personal mementos, but as evidence in support of an asylum claim. The likelihood that this man could find safety without his documents was next to nothing.

The things I saw at the Poland-Belarus border made clear that the Polish government and our own are drawing from the same playbook—erecting physical barriers and enacting policies that block access to asylum. Activists, scholars, and migrants in both hemispheres, too, follow similar paths, countering these harsh measures by providing life-saving aid, fighting for legal protections, and documenting human rights violations. That spirit of resistance made me feel right at home in this far-off borderland, which my grandparents and so many others since have traversed in search of safety.

The post A New Border Wall Draws from an Old American Playbook appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

A man leaps into the air. The theater audience gasps, then relaxes as he safely lands. Jan Karski—scholar, diplomat, World War II Polish Resistance fighter, and the messenger who brought news of the then-secret Holocaust to the world when there was still time to stop it—has just escaped from Gestapo custody into the literal arms of Polish Resistance fighters, who will nurse him back to health.

The actor playing Karski, David Strathairn, tells the audience in Karski’s melodious Eastern European accent that after the escape, the Gestapo rounded up 100 Poles in retaliation. And executed 32 of them.

“Thirty-two lives for his one,” the play’s co-author, Clark Young, told me—describing the scene as a “profound moment of failure and trauma” for the protagonist.

The burden of Karski’s mission was tremendous, Young and co-author Derek Goldman highlight in their one-man play Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, which opens off-Broadway this month. The show debuted in Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2019 and played at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in the fall of 2021, which is when I saw it.

The play is a powerful reminder of Karski’s principles—truth and valor in the face of forces more powerful than you. The playwrights have shared Karski’s life and work with students at Georgetown University, where the real-life Jan Karski taught international relations. They and inclusive pedagogy specialist Ijeoma Njaka have been teaching a course focusing on the play since 2020.

During the play, the character of Jan Karski lands safely after jumping from a third-floor window to escape Gestapo custody. Photo by Rich Hein.

“It’s the kind of thing that truly inspires students, to see there is value even when you ‘fail,’” Young said. And Karski’s “failure” was truly profound: When world leaders did not act upon the proof of the Holocaust Karski delivered, millions died.

Like Karski, I was born in Łódź, Poland, and I also ended up in America, as he did after the war. When two childhood friends invite me to see Remember This in Chicago I initially balk. I struggle with the Polish part of my identity, distressed by developments in my homeland. But I revere Karski, so I go. And I am deeply grateful. Words and truth and witness—always an indelible part of my core—are so important, particularly today.

Jan Karski was born in 1914, and trained as a soldier and diplomat. He joined the fledgling Polish Resistance at the onset of World War II, after Poland was attacked by both Germany and Russia. Karski worked as a courier, delivering messages about clandestine German and Russian operations to the Polish government-in-exile in London. In late 1940, he was captured by the Gestapo and tortured for three days. He feared he would reveal secrets and tried to kill himself. The Gestapo took him to an army hospital, where he recovered from his suicide attempt and then escaped, a pivotal scene in the play.

Remember This opens in early World War II, when Germans established the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, forcing one-third of the city’s population into a section comprising just over two percent of its area. Leaders of the Jewish Underground arranged for Karski to enter the ghetto so he could report what was happening to the Polish government-in-exile, as well as to British and U.S. officials. He and Jewish and Polish Resistance fighters believed that if they told the world—if the Powers That Be realized what was happening—they might stop it.

Karski visited the ghetto twice in 1942 and saw the horrors we today know all too well: starvation and death and decay. Disguised as a camp guard, he later entered a transit camp from which thousands of Polish Jews were transported to Belzec death camp.

In 1943, Karski traveled to London and Washington to meet with Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Karski was told Churchill was too busy; he was passed off to the British foreign secretary. Karski met with FDR—who addressed him as “young man” and inquired about the fate of Poland’s horses, but did not ask a single question about Karski’s horrifying news about German Nazi death camps.

“You will tell your leaders that we shall win this war,” FDR told Karski. “The United States will not abandon your country.” But as we know, as Karski and the Jewish and Polish leaders would come to know, as the millions slaughtered would come to know, FDR and Churchill did not act to stop the Holocaust.

After his meeting with FDR, Karski stayed in the U.S. He published a memoir in early 1944, and earned his PhD from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service eight years later.

He taught at the university for 40 years, but did not speak publicly about his war activities for decades, until Claude Lanzmann interviewed him for the Holocaust documentary Shoah in 1985. In his first appearance in the film, Karski is silent for a few beats, breathing deeply. “Now, I go back,” he says. But he cannot. He breaks down and walks off screen. The trauma that still haunts him is painfully clear. Then he returns, and speaks.

In the documentary, Karski details his work with Szmul Zygielbojm, a Polish Jewish leader who figures prominently in the play. In a poignant scene, Karski reads a letter from Zygielbojm, written after the Warsaw Ghetto has been destroyed and most of Zygielbojm’s family has perished. Zygielbojm is anguished but still believes something can be done. “The responsibility for the crime of the murder of the whole Jewish nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it out, but indirectly it falls also upon the whole of humanity, on the peoples of the Allied nations and on their governments, who up to this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime,” the letter—a suicide note, it turns out—reads.

Zygielbojm hopes his final act of protest will finally spur action. But it does not.

A photo of the real-life Jan Karski on screen while the actor David Strathairn as Jan Karski stand on stage. Photo by Rich Hein.

That’s something that the Georgetown students passionately debate, Georgetown’s Njaka told me: What does it mean to tell, speak, live the truth in the face of such monumental opposition? They also discuss witnessing trauma that isn’t one’s own, especially relevant in many students’ passion for racial and social justice, she said.

It’s relevant to me too, and is why the plays affects me so.

Karski died in 2000. A decade later, I arrived in D.C. to attend journalism school and then went to work as a content director at the Polish embassy—where Karski had stayed when he came to warn FDR. I felt his presence everywhere: in the embassy’s hallways; in the robin’s-egg-blue main room where we held events and where he sits during the interviews I viewed on YouTube. On the anniversary of his death one hot July afternoon, I accompanied embassy officials to lay a wreath at his grave, on a sloping hillside in Mount Olivet Cemetery. The stone is stark, with just his and his wife’s names, and dates of birth and death. I also visited his memorial bench at Georgetown University—where Njaka held some of her classes on Karski this past fall.

When I watch Remember This, it is my first time in a theater since the pandemic began, and I am spellbound. I scribble notes in my program. I also weep—for Karski and his courage; for the Resistance fighters who helped him over and over again; and for today’s Poland: this small country that matters so much to me and my fellow Poles, but probably not to many others. I think about how one of the greatest sins against humanity was perpetrated on our soil and how terrible that legacy is. I think about the trauma that is so deep within those of us whose families were killed, and in those of us whose families survived.

Today’s Poland has veered away from Karski’s message of unity, humanity, and hope, embracing antisemitism and nationalism, declaring that the LGBTQ+ community is “an ideology worse than communism,” and enacting oppressive anti-choice laws.

Maybe this is why the current Polish government’s cruelty feels especially atrocious to me: You know better, I think. You know what it means when you define and vilify one part of a population as Other. You know what it means when people who can help, don’t.

At the end of the play, Karski says—about all he’s seen, all he’s witnessed: “It haunts me. And I want it to be so.”

I too was, and am, haunted. And I too want it to be so.

The post Why a Polish Resistance Fighter’s ‘Failure’ to Stop the Holocaust Resonates Today appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

And then he sings. 

The song is about children who walk round and round the yard of an orphanage, but are not orphans. One watches as his father is taken away from their home in shackles. Another wants to write a letter to her parents in an internment camp as she wonders: Does anyone know where I am?

When he finishes, the audience erupts into boisterous applause that morphs into synchronized clapping. The man leans into the mic: “I have a few songs left. Shall we leave this clapping till the end?” The audience laughs and cheers. “Noooo!” someone shouts. He tunes his guitar, clears his throat, and begins another song.  

The year is 1983. The Cold War is still very cold, though U.S. President Ronald Reagan is a few years away from bossing the Soviet president about tearing down a wall. Men at Work’s “Down Under” and Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” are at the top of the U.S. charts. The Police will soon embark on their final official tour, with openers Joan Jett and A Flock of Seagulls. 

This auditorium—at a community college on Chicago’s north side—is smaller and plainer than the ones The Police will play. Just 300-some seats, each filled for the first of four concerts organized by and for Polish-American activists, who have come to hear this performer and his acoustic guitar: Jacek Kaczmarski, the beloved bard of Solidarity—Poland’s massive social justice movement, nearly 10-million strong. 

Born in 1957 in Warsaw to an artist couple, Kaczmarski studied polonistyka—historic and modern Polish language and literature—at the University of Warsaw in the 1970s. While still in school, he performed in cabarets, writing ballads that, through references to Polish history and art, commented on oppressive communist politics and restrictive policies. 

Like any non-state-sanctioned artistic expression in an authoritarian country, Kaczmarski’s work carefully threaded the line between open critique and coy allusion. His ballads were filled with true stories of heroism that celebrated Polish resistance and heart. It was the exact opposite of the communist regime’s approach, which sought to depress national pride, and maintain control, by lying and casting blame.

Kaczmarski’s audiences loved him, and he soon began giving solo performances in private clubs and homes to avoid the scrutiny of the censorious government. He graduated in 1980, the same year that the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union, also known as “Solidarity”—whose membership included nearly one-third of Poland’s population—was officially recognized by Poland’s government as an independent trade union, the first of its kind in the entire Soviet Bloc. Kaczmarski too was a member and regularly played at Solidarity events. His ballad “Mury” (“Walls”) became the movement’s unofficial anthem, regularly chanted at protests. Supporters scrawled its lyrics on government buildings and park benches. 

The movement was led by electrician Lech Wałęsa and welder Anna Walentynowicz, shipyard workers in Gdansk. Both were members of anti-communist, underground trade unions in the 1970s, which staged strikes and called for workers’ rights reform. In the summer of 1980, the communist government increased already high food prices, and the country erupted into a series of labor strikes. These accelerated when Walentynowicz, who edited an underground newsletter, was fired for her open criticism. She was five months from retirement, which meant she wouldn’t receive any benefits. In response, shipyard workers staged a strike demanding she be reinstated at work.

Although the shipyard caved within days, the workers kept striking—calling for higher pay, improved working conditions, and civil rights, including the freedom of expression—until the end of August, when the government formally recognized Solidarity. The union soon also received statements of support from the U.S. government and the Vatican. 

Solidary continued its activism. But by the end of the year, the communist government had had enough. On December 13, 1981, nearly 2,000 military tanks began rolling down Polish streets, soon joined by thousands of combat vehicles and 100,000 members of the militia and secret police. 

Ultimately, around 5,000 Solidarity members were arrested and put into detention cells. Their children were placed into orphanages, becoming orphaned non-orphans. TV and radio stations went silent. Borders were closed. At 6 a.m., the official state Polish Radio declared martial law. The days that followed were violent and bloody. A Solidarity-organized protest at the Wujek Coal Mine ended with thousands more arrests, beatings, and shootings, and multiple deaths. The youngest casualty was 19 years old. 

Kaczmarski was abroad when martial law was announced. That October, he had begun touring with a French exhibition about Solidarity. Like many Poles around the world, he obsessively scoured for news as the strikes and arrests and deaths continued. And he kept performing, which is what brought him to the United States. One of his first stops was New York, where he met filmmaker Richard Adams.

“Our nation wants to create its life based on its own history,” Kaczmarski told Adams in 1982, after a performance in Brooklyn, for the documentary Citizens for Solidarity. “Not history as told by communist propaganda.”

Adams was deeply moved by the music’s complexity, and its message. “I felt that Kaczmarski’s singing had an intellectual, historical, moral and purely verbal richness that made American songs sound like jingles,” he told me, in a recent interview. 

After New York, Kaczmarski came to Chicago for a sold-out concert series where he worked through an extensive set list of ballads written both before and after martial law. The pre-martial-law ballads dipped in and out of 19th- and 20th-century Polish history, presenting the Polish heroism often absent from post-World War II communist history books. The more recent ballads focused on the present, and were even bolder: mocking the communists, despairing the hopelessness of seemingly never-ending oppression. 

“Sen Katarzyny II-giej” (“Catherine the Great’s Dream”) presents the love/hate affair between the voracious Russian czarina and one of her favorite lovers, Polish king Stanisław August Poniatowski. Kaczmarski’s baritone lowered to a guttural growl as he relished his way through the bawdy lyrics: “I need a lover as big as the [Russian] empire / who’d take me the way I give my all.” 

In “Raport Ambasadora” (“The Ambassador’s Report”) a Polish nobleman protests the first partition of Poland in 1783: “‘Traitors!’ some shouted, but who to whom?…Win whatever you can win!” Kaczmarski spit out each and every syllable, then shifted to draw out a long vowel. 

In “Listy” (“Letters”) Kaczmarski sang about the Cuban poet Armando Valladares, imprisoned by Castro for decades. “When I wrote this song, his case seemed hopeless,” Kaczmarski told the audience that night. “But that spring he was freed. This song is about waiting, and hope.” 

He also sang what he called “a love letter” to the Russian actor and poet Vladimir Vysotsky, whom he’d met in 1974. Their lives came to have multiple chilling similarities, including early deaths. 

And then, “Mury,” initially written in 1978, about the walls that can surround artists and their creativity—and by 1981 an anti-communist anthem for Poles everywhere. The Chicago audience sang along: “The walls will fall, fall, fall, and bury the old world.”

The plain black album cover for the concert recording of Polish singer Jacek Kaczmarski’s 1983 performance in Chicago was designed to evade confiscation by government authorities. His music delved into Polish history and criticized Communist oppression. Courtesy of Justine Jablonska.

Each of Kaczmarski’s concerts in Chicago was recorded for a double vinyl record album. My dad supervised the recording in a sound booth above the balcony; he and my mom were part of the Polish American activist group that organized the concerts. The album cover was black with a blank, white rectangle; the back completely white. No writing on the cover, representing the communist censorship that sought to muzzle Kaczmarski (in the autumn of 1981, the Soviet embassy in Poland had issued an official statement denouncing the “anti-Soviet” nature of Kaczmarski’s rhetoric). 

The spare design would also help the albums slip past customs: his music was anathema to the communist authorities monitoring all incoming shipments during martial law. Hundreds of these albums would make their way to Poland over the next few years, accompanied by a fake liner: “Windy City” presents Rhythm and Blues extravaganza.

My brother and I met Kaczmarski that night in Chicago in ’83, ushered backstage during the act break by our parents. We solemnly presented the singer with a crayon drawing we’d labored over earlier that day: a brick wall, tall on one side, crumbling on the other. Above a stick figure wearing glasses and holding a guitar, I’d printed MURY in my childish hand. Kaczmarski took in the drawing for a few moments, and thanked us.

Kaczmarski kept touring. Anti-communist protests continued. Solidarity kept at it. Until April 1989, when the Round Table Talks officially ended communist rule in Poland. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. And at the end of 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved. 

Kaczmarski spent the rest of his life traveling, and settled in Australia for a while. He regularly returned to Poland but never lived there again. He drank heavily, alcoholism an ever-present demon, and in his mid-40s, was diagnosed with throat cancer. After a tracheotomy, he lost his voice, and by early 2004, could no longer speak. He died in April 2004, at the age of 47, and is buried in Warsaw. 

My parents still have the master tapes of the Chicago concert recordings; they’ve never been digitized or shared, beyond the albums that were shipped to Poland. My copy of the record plays perfectly to this day. It’s a treasured possession, a time capsule. In the recording I can hear my mom laughing at something Kaczmarski has said. I know that somewhere in that applause, my brother and I are clapping. I have no photos or videos from the concert. But I have this record. 

I reach to it in times of turmoil and uncertainty. The album reminds me that dark times come, and dark times go—as long as brave people exist to speak the truth. I recently watched a short clip of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s film Blind Chance, from 1981, about a character who, in one of three alternative storylines, becomes a member of the Polish opposition movement. Kaczmarski appears as himself in a short cameo, singing “Nie Lubie” (“I Hate”) at an underground Solidarity meeting. 

He looks very young, very intense. “I hate myself when I feel fear / When I look for excuses for the wicked,” he sings. His lyrics are sharp and defiant, an eternal cry for justice in the face of tyranny. 

The post The Beloved Bard of Solidarity appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

These aren’t my first protests—far from it. As the child of Polish American immigrant activists, I was raised on this form of expression. Even before I understood Polish politics or why we were marching, my community taught me to fight for freedom from tyranny.

But during these protests, my community has been silent. And that pains me tremendously. I find I can no longer reconcile the values I was raised with, with a lot of what I’m seeing in my community today.

I think back to my first protests, in search of understanding what went wrong.

*

I am 8 years old. It’s December, and the wind whips off Lake Michigan and snow crunches under my cold feet. Our small group slowly walks in a circle. The adults carry signs and chant in thick Polish accents: Stop Red Terror. We are in front of a gray stone building. All the curtains are pulled closed. Round and round we go.

My 5-year-old brother walks next to me. Sometimes we join in the chants and imitate the accents: Stop Ret Terro. Every once in a while, we get to warm up inside a van, where adults give us hot tea. And then back outside, back into the circle we go.

We return often to march in front of this building. It is called the “consulate.” Polish people work in it, but they don’t want Poland to be free. The Polish flag hangs outside, but the eagle that flies on it has no crown. It’s supposed to, though, my dad tells me. “The communists took the crown off the Polish eagle,” he says.

Martial law. I see the phrase in papers. I watch grainy footage of a balding man explain why it is necessary. I overhear things when the adults come to our house at night. “Arrest” and “show trial.” The adults are angry that the balding man lies so much.

In the spring, the protests get louder. By the summer, there are so many people that I get lost in the crowd.

Someone picks me up and hoists me onto a newspaper stand. There’s a bus stop sign above it that I conk my head on. When I start crying, a woman sees me and calls out: “Don’t cry, little one. Someday Poland will be free.”

That fall, an activist priest in Poland is kidnapped and killed by three police officers who are in the “secret police.” The next protest at the gray building is silent. People hold candles, and the priest’s photo.

The priest has a kind face. I look at all the faces around me. So many are crying.

*

Stop Ret Terro. Because terror it was. Life in post-World War II Poland was grim. One-fifth of the country’s citizens—mostly civilians—had perished during the war, including 90 percent of its Jewish population. Poland’s infrastructure was devastated: the capital, Warsaw, was bombed so heavily that it was nearly leveled. The economy struggled to stabilize.

The communist yoke, imposed by Soviet influence, never took. Anti-government protests and strikes began in the 1950s and intensified in the 1960s and 1970s. The more Poles protested, the more the Soviets clamped down. The economy bottomed out. There were regular power outages and shortages of everything, from food to manufacturing equipment.

My parents, who were born in Poland in 1943, were raised on a regular diet of propaganda about amazing Mother Russia, and terrible capitalist America. They met at music school: My father studied piano and jazz, and my mother musical theory. Artists got special privileges, including travel to places like Siberia and Sweden. And then, to America. My dad went first, traveling on an extended artist visa in the mid-1970s, to play in Chicago jazz clubs. My mom and I followed half a year later.

Politics were heating up back home, where an economic recession threatened to throw Poland into bankruptcy. Poland’s Solidarity movement, which emerged from the first independent labor union in the Soviet bloc and became a 9 million member-strong anti-communist social revolution, was in full swing, and striking workers demonstrated in the streets. In what would be their last-ditch effort to regain control, in December 1981 the communist government declared martial law and imposed severe restrictions on everyday life: no gatherings, no protests, no inter-city travel, wire taps in public phone booths, a complete media blackout, a curfew monitored and enforced by military tanks and military units. Thousands of activists were thrown into prison without charges. Some were killed.

When the authorities declared martial law, my parents were among the first protestors in Chicago. They had earlier started an organization, Pomost, which means “bridge.” Now, people were always at our house, talking into the night about who was arrested back home, who was freed, and who the communists were spying on now.

We marched and protested for two years, until martial law was lifted and Poland was free again. For years after that, we watched the country pursue a liberal, progressive, pro-democracy and pro-EU agenda, achieving economic stability and growth. Once an adult, I went to work for the Polish Embassy in Washington, D.C., launching a social media program that was rolled out to all the Polish diplomatic missions around the world—including the Polish consulate I’d marched under when I was a child.

I made videos, unearthed never-before-seen photos of the embassy at the Library of Congress, and interviewed all the interesting people—film director Agnieszka Holland, for one—who came through the embassy. I loved sharing Poland’s history and its innovative present, and poured myself into the work.

*

Today I watch Poland—my beloved, strong homeland that suffered, and fought and fought and fought, and finally broke free—slowly become the thing it once feared and battled against. I am outraged. And heartbroken.

There’s an election in 2015, and Poland elects a strongly right-wing government. The vote is pretty close, 52 percent to 48 percent, and pretty evenly split. Urban areas and western Poland (closer to Europe) vote for the progressive incumbent, while rural and eastern Poland (closer to Russia) vote for the conservative challenger, Andrzej Duda.

Duda and the ruling party preach strongly nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-woman, and anti-Other rhetoric. Their policies follow suit. Parliament proposes a strict anti-abortion ban in 2016. The ban does not pass—tens of thousands of women across Poland march in protest, holding wire hangers—but in fall 2020 the government issues restrictions on abortion anyway. Polish women around the world again take to the streets. As of this writing, they are still protesting.

Also in 2020, the loudly pro-Trump Duda declares in his re-election campaign that LGBTQ+ is an “ideology more dangerous than communism” that must be stamped out. Same-sex marriage and civil unions are illegal in Poland, but hate speech gets a free pass. Nearly 100 small cities across Poland declare themselves “LGBT-free zones.” “Beware the rainbow plague!” the Catholic archbishop of Krakow thunders.

Many people protest this, too. The EU chimes in, warning about the dangers of this rhetoric. Still, Duda is re-elected. The majority of Polish Americans with dual citizenship who participate in the Polish elections vote for him.

*

In America, we’re having our own issues. I march and protest—and this time I know exactly why and what for. As I kneel at a silent vigil for Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in Brooklyn this summer, I watch as a mother cradles her young son. Tears stream down my face as I think about the people who want to harm him because of the color of his skin.

I obsessively scour for news of any response to BLM from the Polish American community. I see nothing until May 2020, when a monument of a Polish general gets defaced in Washington, D.C.

This general, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, was one of the good ones. In 1776, he escaped Poland and joined the American cause during the Revolutionary War, acting heroically at the Battle of Saratoga and designing the defenses at West Point military academy during the height of the Revolutionary War. He was a buddy of Thomas Jefferson who despised slavery; the two had a lengthy written correspondence, in which Kosciuszko tried to persuade Jefferson just how loathsome slavery was. In his will, Kosciuszko left his fortune to Jefferson and begged Jefferson to use it to free the enslaved people at Monticello. Jefferson, as we know, did none of that.

During anti-police brutality protests after George Floyd’s killing, some people spray paint Kosciuszko’s statue, as well as the other statues in Lafayette Park, in front of the White House. BLM tags, an anarchy symbol or two.

A Polish reporter tweets about it. He stands under the Kosciuszko monument and asks passers-by if they know who Kosciuszko is (they do not). His feed and a subsequent article race through the Polish American community—which loses its collective mind.

Not because a man was murdered by police. Not because a woman was shot to death in her own bed. Not because the president of the U.S. uses the same authoritarian tactics they once fled: tear gas, overzealous police in riot gear, a staged photo op in front of a church. Not because the people being targeted are our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues, our family.

No, Polish Americans are upset that this monument—“Our monument! Our compatriot! Our hero!”—got spray painted. They have a lot to say about it. I see countless social media posts, emails, and news articles complaining about “desecration.” There are condescending denunciations of the American educational system: “What are we teaching our youth if we aren’t teaching them about Kosciuszko and his values?”

The Polish ambassador piles on via Twitter. The Embassy of Poland in the U.S. retweets and agrees. When I worked at the embassy, I started that Twitter feed to highlight the embassy’s diplomatic work, and to share interesting Polish cultural and historical tidbits—photos from events, gorgeous artwork and furnishings from the embassy building. Now I scroll through the comments and see hatred and condemnation for the protestors. I feel nauseated as I see the n-word, over and over again.

I try to engage with people on Facebook, gently attempting to steer the conversation toward the ideals he fought for and his anti-slavery stance. But most people cannot connect what is so clear for me: Kosciuszko hated slavery. What’s happening now is an extended form of slavery. Kosciuszko would have spoken out against it. We should too.

Many Polish Americans support Donald Trump, joining a number of immigrant groups who embrace his rhetoric. Many come from communities for whom the word “communist” is anathema, and Ronald Reagan was a saint. These groups readily believe messaging that Democrats will usher in socialism—a concept which remains murkily undefined, but is irrefutably Bad and Wrong.

To me, what’s truly Bad and horribly Wrong is turning a blind eye toward the suffering of oppressed groups and individuals, and undermining the foundation of American democracy. I learned my ideals from my parents and their protester friends; from Polish scouts, Polish-language school, Polish books and movies and conversations. Truth above all. Freedom and honor. Worth based not on religion or race, but in how you move through this world. The right to dissent; the right to speak out. The courage to stand up to hatred and bigotry. The fortitude to help others: to not just empathize with those who suffer, but to help them in their struggle. To protest and march with them, like we once did. To fight against authoritarianism, like we once did.

I cannot reconcile my community’s past and its present. BLM protests continue, and the Polish American community remains silent, hiding inside that gray building, curtains tightly drawn.

Outside, people are protesting and screaming. Human rights are being trampled. But the tags and graffiti are gone from the monuments in Lafayette Park. The statue is clean.

The post The Damning Silence of Polish Americans appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The parade of beautiful
boys and women

have long since gone.
Along with the letters

and packets
of photographs.

Yesterday
G. read my cards:

tarot, through the white, pink
static of the television set.

Child, he said,
you are a bone.

You must leave
everything,

burn it all down
to the ground.

In the Polish black and white film
I sit inside the parked white sedan,

disguised as a boy
in oversized black

slacks, white tank, and pale pink
satin bomber jacket.

My hair is bleached
and cropped.

My hands are tied
behind my back.

I am moving
my lips
as if
in whisper.

As the camera moves nearer
I murmur

though barely, I may be
disappearing.

I am devouring
small chocolates wrapped in bright plastic.

Parked outside the high-rise
apartment

of the Warsaw
housing project.

(Inside, teenage-children smoke
and carry over-sized stuffed animals. )

There is nothing
I would not do.

Everything
I once knew,

is gone.

The post HOTEL WARSAW appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Her name is Poland.

No joke.

I see by the look on your face, California, that you are a bit shocked at this news. I realize that, when you think about your place in the world, you compare yourself to other big states, like Texas (economically) or New York (culturally). And when you’re feeling proud, you trot out the gross domestic product figures that put you in the top 10 of all countries around the world, up there with Italy and Russia and ahead of India.

But I’ve gotta tell you: These usual points of comparisons are too different to be instructive. Texas, for example, is a much bigger place in area, and has more than 10 million fewer people, than California. And the countries with similarly sized economies are much too big—think of Russia’s nine time zones or India’s more than 1 billion people—to make comparisons to California all that useful.

If you really want to understand who you are, California, you need to examine the country that most resembles you in size and population. And that country is Poland. Like you, Poland is home to 38 million people. And California is just slightly bigger in land area, but not by much (160,000 square miles for you, 120,000 square miles for them).

And that’s not all these two places have in common. For all their differences in history, today Poland and California are both crossroads that sit on global dividing lines between major regions. Poland and California each look West hopefully, and see the potential for growth by trading with prosperous continents (Western Europe and Asia, respectively). And—let’s face it—both look nervously East toward oil-rich, war-mongering, fading empires that aren’t nearly as democratic as they claim to be (Russia and the United States, respectively).

There has never been a better time than right now to take a hard look at Poland. Few countries have had a better time of it over the last quarter-century. Capitalizing on the end of the Cold War and the expansion of the European Union, Poland has experienced extraordinary growth, averaging 4 percent a year. (The social transformations have been nearly as stunning in this conservative, Catholic country; the northern city of Slupsk recently elected an openly gay mayor, something San Francisco hasn’t yet managed.) Most strikingly, Poland was the only major European economy to avoid a recession during the financial crisis; its economy is more than 20 percent larger now than it was in 2007. Long-term projections show Poland growing faster than other European countries through at least 2030.

What could you, California, hope to learn from examining Poland?

The most obvious—and important—lesson is how absurdly rich California remains. For all its growth, Poland’s economy, at $520 billion in GDP, is barely one-fourth the size of California’s $2 trillion economy. Despite being poorer, Poland’s recent investments in infrastructure dwarf California’s—Poland is now spending three times more in actual dollars on infrastructure than it did in 2006. That disparity should put the lie to the popular notion in California that the state doesn’t have the money or resources to make bigger investments in its future.

Comparing the two places on education also holds lessons. In K-12, Polish kids actually do better on measures of reading, math, and science than California kids. But California’s advantage in the quantity and quality of our universities more than compensates for that earlier deficit. Only two Polish universities show up in global rankings, while the outsized economic impact of California’s universities—in the workers they educate and the innovations they spur—is a big reason why California is so prosperous. In this context, Gov. Jerry Brown’s miserly attempt to limit state investment in the University of California looks—to use a Polish word—glupi.

The contrast on jobs is instructive. California business types tend to oppose efforts to raise wages and complain that it costs too much to employ people here. But when you look at Poland, you’re reminded that cheap labor—while useful to Western European companies that outsource work there—means that people have less money to pump into the economy. On the other hand, California labor unions routinely push to restrict how companies hire and fire their workers. Among Poland’s biggest handicaps are burdensome labor regulations and protections that discourage hiring, firing, and switching jobs. The takeaway: California’s combination of very high wages and more flexible labor markets—features of your economy since the 19th century—help make the state great.

Another big difference involves globalization. California is home to far more global companies than Poland. And California, despite recent declines in immigration, far surpasses Poland in attracting and keeping immigrants. Poland will have to change that if it wants to catch up with places like California economically.

The good news: Polish eyes already have turned to California to try to figure out how the country can improve itself. Late last year, the Polish government even held a Polish American Innovation Week in the Golden State, with events in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Stanford.

Much of the conversation was about how to build universities, innovative companies, and labor markets that are more like California’s. I dropped by and chatted with Polish Undersecretary of State Katarzyna Kacperczyk, who speaks seven languages and studied economics at Columbia University. I asked her a lot of questions about Poland. She asked me much better questions about California—the kind of questions you get from people who, while they may lag behind, are gaining on you.

I wish Californians thought as much about our European sister as the Poles think about us.

The post Were California and Poland Separated at Birth? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Hosting the Euro Cup 2012 tournament–one of the most entertaining and biggest sporting events in the world, which brings hundreds of thousands of people to our host cities, and millions more via TV screens–is a huge honor for us Poles.

Europe is the mother of soccer, after all, though at times it seems as if soccer might be the mother of Europe. And so beyond all the fun, it is worth celebrating that Europe is entrusting its prized tournament to Poland and Ukraine, countries that for a long time lived in historic isolation.

It wasn’t that long ago–only 23 years–that the wall came down, allowing Poland to rejoin Europe. Back then our economically ruined post-Communist land had little understanding of what it meant to be a part of the Western, capitalist world. We were a nation-in-training.

During these last two decades we’ve managed to reset the country’s economy, build an educated society, and become a member of NATO and the European Union. We haven’t yet adopted the euro as our currency, but that may not be such a bad thing! Our nation’s economic performance in recent years has been among the continent’s strongest. These are the best of times for Poland.

And yet, hosting the Euro Cup (along with Ukraine) does create some anxiety, bringing out our “second league country” complex. Will all those visitors like us? Will we prove worthy of this stage? It seems like we are being tested. If we succeed, we enter the first league. But if all doesn’t go well, we’ll be ashamed. Would Holland feel this way about hosting such a tournament? Somehow I don’t think so.

To pass this test, Poland drew up grand visions of new stadiums, a new grid of highways and railways, new airports, and more new infrastructure. A giant civilization leap! A lot was accomplished, though maybe less than what was initially envisioned when we were awarded the tournament in 2007. And even some of the triumphs have been accompanied by a touch of shame. Take my city of Wroclaw’s new stadium. The Polish company chosen to build the arena ultimately had to cede the project to a German firm after delays and other construction problems. The Polish concern’s lack of experience was crippling–it was like asking a car manufacturer to build a spaceship.

The whole preparation process exposed many national flaws like poor time management, illogical construction laws, a lack of long-term planning, and a tendency to rush into projects. You can see the effects of these flaws all over the country in unfinished investments, pieces of highways that lead to nowhere, and trains as slow as they were 50 years ago. Language will also prove another challenge for Euro 2012 visitors: English is spoken by a large number of young Poles, but not by many of the older generations, who operate our public service institutions. Foreigners may find it hard to communicate with them in basic, everyday situations like buying train tickets.

But the games are on, and the euphoria has a way of erasing most problems. The stadiums are shiny now that the dust is off. The fans pouring through our cities from around the world are watching world-class soccer in world-class facilities, eating Polish kielbasa during the breaks. That’s hard to beat, and between games they walk through our historic squares staring at some of the most beautiful girls they have ever seen. They will meet locals and join them for a shot of the best vodka. Because, as we say, “Gosc w dom–Bog w dom!”

Which translates roughly as, “A guest at home is like God’s presence at home.”

Mateusz Kornacki is the founder of the “What’s Up Wroclaw” tour company.

*Photo courtesy of PolandMFA.

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