‘Jeszcze Polska nie zgine ?a’

– opening words of the Polish national anthem

THE Polish people have an interesting way to describe winning – “not losing”. The words which open the national anthem are usually translated as “Poland is not yet lost”. This sentiment springs from the very heart of a nation which has suffered much in the past millennium.

In that period, Europe has been in constant ferment, with one group assaulting another to establish hegemony. Duchies, principalities, kingdoms and empires fought at one time or another, expanding their territory only to see it shrink as other groups achieved dominance. Poland, which has existed as a state since the end of the 10th century, has endured much of this grief.

Yet, it did enjoy an extended golden age. At its height in the 16th century, Poland expanded its boundaries to become the largest country in Europe. Its territory covered most of what is today’s Poland along with Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and parts of Russia. It had formed a commonwealth with the Duchy of Lithuania, an arrangement which lasted a remarkable 2 1/4 centuries before the commonwealth collapsed and its territory was divided among Prussia, the Russian empire and Austria.

After the First World War, Poland regained its independence and proclaimed itself as the Second Polish Republic. Alas, that didn’t last very long, as an extremely nasty individual called Hitler had taken power in neighbouring Germany and had designs on Polish territory. He regarded its citizens, Slav and Jew alike, as sub-human, and was determined to get rid of them.

In 1938 he made a cynical agreement with the Soviet Union to divide Poland like a birthday cake. That is exactly what happened a year later when Hitler unleashed his mighty Wehrmacht against his Baltic neighbour. When that global nightmare ended six years later, Poland had lost a greater portion of its population than any other country in the war. Some five million Polish citizens – three million of them Jews – were killed and much of its infrastructure and historic cities reduced to rubble. At war’s end, the Soviet Union took over and set up a puppet government which lasted until its collapse in 1969. It was replaced by the Third Polish Republic, which is firmly and democratically in power right now.

When Hitler invaded Poland from the west, Stalin sent his Red Army in from the other direction and it occupied the eastern part of Poland. They captured almost half a million Polish soldiers and policemen. About half of those were quickly released and the others were taken over by the dreaded Soviet secret police, the NKVD. They were interned in prison camps at several locations where they were subjected to intensive interrogations and political haranguing.

On April 3, 1940, Soviet forces rounded up several thousand military officers, policemen, engineers, doctors, university professors, lawyers and teachers and took them to Katyn Forest about 20 kilometres west of the Russian city of Smolensk. They were systematically shot and buried in huge pits dug in the forest floor. Others were killed at prison camps and taken to the site to be buried. In all, about 22,000 Poles were slaughtered that day. In one fell swoop, the NKVD had eliminated almost half the Polish officer corps as well as a fair chunk of the country’s intellectual elite.

Ironically it was the murderous Nazis who brought the massacre to the notice of the outside world after they broke their agreement with the Kremlin and invaded the Soviet Union. In 1943 they discovered the huge graves at Katyn and employed the massacre as propaganda against the Soviet Union. The Kremlin countered that the dead Poles were victims of the Germans and their death squads.

Moscow stuck to that line until the advent of Mikhail Gorbachov, who in 1989 admitted that it was, indeed, the Soviet secret police which was responsible. Shamefully, Britain, France and the United States kept silent about the massacre in order not to discomfit their Soviet ally.

Polish distrust of the Russians goes a long way back and was reinforced by the secret agreement between Moscow and Berlin and by that egregious act of brutality. Moscow’s attitude and actions during the communist regime added to the rancour.

Earlier this month, a Polish delegation led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk travelled to Katyn to observe the 70th anniversary of the massacre. Tusk is from a centrist Polish party, the Civic Platform, and had defeated Jaroslaw Kaczynski three years ago. Kaczynski’s identical twin brother, Lech, was elected president five years ago. The brothers were from the hard-right Law and Justice Party. Significantly, the Russians had not invited the president for that ceremony, so he put together his own delegation and set out for the shrine a week ago.

The Polish Air Force plane carried 96 people, including the president and his wife, 18 members of parliament, the heads of all four armed forces, the head of the central bank and the deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament. It crashed in thick fog at an airport near Smolensk, killing all on board.

Poland immediately went into mourning, with the area around the presidential palace in Warsaw surrounded by a sea of candles and flowers. Churches and cathedrals all over Poland resounded with prayers and masses last Sunday, as will be the case for the funeral tomorrow. It will take place in the venerable city of Krakow at the 1000-year-old Wawel cathedral which is the main burial site of Polish monarchs since the 14th century.

Poland is the most Roman Catholic country in the world, with more than 80 per cent of its people claiming to be adherents. Along with its language impenetrable to outsiders and the unique dance known as the mazurka, the church has been a constant element of stability in a history of turmoil.

Paradoxically, this tragedy which arose out of an even greater one seven decades ago contains the seeds of a rapprochement with the Russians. The Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been extraordinarily supportive since the tragedy – visiting the crash site several times and ordering a national day of mourning. Most tellingly, he ordered the showing of a no-holds-barred Polish documentary of the Katyn massacre on prime-time television.

Poland has been enjoying an unprecedented two decades of freedom and with it, the taste of prosperity within the fold of the European Union. The wiping out of so many of its national leaders may be a serious body blow, but it hasn’t brought the country to its knees, except in mourning. All the affected public institutions have enough depth of talent to fill the leadership gaps. And the tragedy has had no discernible effect on the stock, financial and currency markets. An election which was expected in the autumn will now be moved up, perhaps to late May or early June.

While Poles mourn, it’s business as usual. Evidently the national anthem nails it correctly: Poland, indeed, is not yet lost!

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca