The tragic German-Polish history may not be the hostage of policy, warns the Polish journalist Jaroslaw Kurski. Instead, all of the Parties to democracy and European values to protect.
Jaroslaw Kurski at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn
I’m in Gdansk, born in German Danzig. All gdańsk bear the tragedy of the story. 50 years ago, at that time in the service of Communist Propaganda, the media sounded from morning till night, that my hometown has always been Polish. As a child, I felt like it. But as I got to know the first letter, I have found that in my supposedly since time immemorial, the Polish house, the Knobs on the radiators and the taps with the slightly weird-sounding words, “cold – warm”. Also in the letter-box, the German inscription “letters” on it. Old-fashioned-dressed, elderly ladies talking about it on the way back from the Church a odd language – I later learned that they are called “low German”.
I am not going to say that Danzig always was German, as was first the Prussian and later Nazi Propaganda, and just as little – as the Communist Propaganda that Gdansk was an eternally Polish city. No, the story is more complex and at the same time fascinating.
A cult of freedom, beyond nationalism
We, the young rebellious opposition of the 1980s, have rejected these two nationalistic-motivated Narrative. Instead, we reflected on the books of the gdańsk: the memoirs of the mother of Arthur Schopenhauer, the novels of Günter Grass, the Essays of Hermann Rauschning – in particular, his “Revolution of nihilism” and the books by Paweł Huelle and Stefan vehicles as well as. We felt rather than in gdańsk the free city of Danzig. The cult of freedom, beyond all nationalisms, from the Hansa to Solidarnosc and Lech Walesa, was the most important for us. He was a part of our identity.
I would remind you, in order to draw a conclusion: Always, if you are hostile to the history of political engineers left, which formed in the past according to their political and nationalistic points of view, that is to be removed, the poles and the Germans from each other, and to the worst misfortune.
Therefore, the gesture of Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Helmut Kohl in November 1989 was in krzyżowa is so important: an Image of the German-French reconciliation, from Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer. They opened for centuries, the first non-confrontational Chapter in Polish-German relations and enabled the “heroism of reconciliation,” as the Archbishop Alfons Nossol, the formation of the upper shepherd of Opole, formulated. A heroism that began more than 50 years ago with the letter of the Polish bishops to their German brethren, and the words: “We forgive and ask for forgiveness”.
Helmut Kohl (R.) embraced Tadeusz Mazowiecki in krzyżowa (1989)
The guardians of the heritage of Kohl and Mazowiecki
My uncle Franciszek Baranowski, husband of my aunt Sarah, fled from Schwetz in Pomerania in the Generalgouvernement, in order to escape forced recruitment by the armed forces. His two younger brothers were killed in German uniforms on the Eastern front, shot dead by Russian soldiers. It is one of the family stories that were in Pomerania on the agenda. I don’t mention you for no reason. Because you may need it for political aims and of anti-German resentment, by unearthing from a biography of a grandfather in a Wehrmacht uniform. Or you can make it so how to do it for years, the nominees and winners of the Tadeusz Mazowiecki, journalist award by the German-Polish explain hard fates and the human tragedies of the border regions close to tell – from Masuria, kashubia, Pomerania, great Poland or Silesia. In order to ultimately create a climate of trust, of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Institutions, such as Tadeusz Mazowiecki prize for journalists, until recently, the Museum of the Second world war, the Kreisau Foundation for European understanding, and, not least, the independent media: you all are the guardians of the heritage that was left of two great Europeans, and the Christian Democrats: Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
We know gdańsk us with the tragedy of the story particularly well
Without these institutions, without freedom of the media, the soon – to – be, the decision should fall-“re-Polo” micronized, it will be very easy to rekindle the flame of anti-German Propaganda. In Poland they are known from the time of Wladyslaw Gomulkas and the letter of the Polish bishops to their German brethren. As it was, at the time, Konrad Adenauer, in the Crusader’s cloak, with claws to the areas in the West of Poland, covering, today, on the front pages of some government-friendly magazines, German Chancellor Angela Merkel or EU Council President Donald Tusk in – to put it mildly – a national socialist style shown in the picture.
If our common, tragic story is back for a hostage of politics, we are wasting in an irresponsible way, the fruits of that Dialogue, the our fathers long before 1989 have begun. We are wasting the efforts of those who had personal reasons for the Suffering you inflicted to forgive – and this action, in the name of the common future. We mention here only Władysław Bartoszewski, Stanisław Stomma, Jerzy Pszon, Jan Nowak by the authors, Karl Dedecius, but also Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, Willy Brandt and many others.
We know gdańsk us with the tragedy of the story particularly well. This also includes the awareness of the fact that the worst crimes can repeat that a person to another place. The peace, the democracy, the European values, tolerance and human solidarity are the values that you always worry and you always have to protect.
The Polish Journalist Jaroslaw Kurski, Deputy editor-in-chief of the liberal daily “Gazeta Wyborcza”. In the 1980s, he was in the anti-Communist underground. In 1989-1990, he was press spokesman of the solidarity Chairman, Lech Walesa. His brother Jacek Kurski, however, a conservative politician was national and was in the election campaign of 2005 famous when he accused the then presidential candidate, Donald Tusk, that had been a father in the Wehrmacht. Tusk lost the race for the national conservative candidate Lech Kaczynski.
The Text is a slightly abridged version of the speech by Jaroslaw Kurski at the award ceremony of the Tadeusz Mazowiecki prize for journalism in Zielona Gora (green mountain).