How I remember it
We all remember the most important events in our lives, the unforeseen ones in particular. Just like people, nations too have such memorable moments in their history: each generation as a whole has witnessed a number of unanticipated, shocking incidents which have engraved themselves into its memory. We all share many common memories, despite the fact that we have never met. In a sense shared memories unite people all over the world.
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Take the assassination of John F. Kennedy as an example: everyone who lived in the United States or elsewhere - within reach of Western news - at that time vividly remembers November the 22nd, 1963. The Americans were aghast and devastated, and nearly the entire world was stunned. The assassination itself was not broadcast, but the funeral was transmitted by satellite to many countries, the Soviet Union included. I was twelve at the time living in Poland, and the event barely registered in my young consciousness, which might partly have been due to our not owning a T.V. In the aftermath of President Kennedy’s assassination, people from all over the world, including children, wrote to Mrs. Kennedy and her children expressing sympathy and respect. The next fall, when we moved to another town, a girl at my new school - presumably wishing to win my friendship - showed me the response card which she had received from the White House: Mrs. Kennedy is deeply appreciative of your sympathy and grateful for your thoughtfulness. Even without the signature of Jacqueline Kennedy, it made a deep impression on me. It came from afar, from the forbidden land (the Communist point of view). It was hard for me to imagine that a Polish schoolgirl’s letter had been able to get through a crack in the Iron Curtain, travel far beyond the horizon of our world, and land on a desk in the White House – amazing. Thus the tragic death of the American President had caused a small miracle. This fact imbued me with a feeling of inexplicable hope. The condolence letter which my schoolmate (today a retired teacher) wrote over fifty years ago resides now at President Kennedy's library, among hundreds of thousands of similar letters. And when I think back to the death of J.F.K, I see, invariably, two pictures: the black letters of Mrs. Kennedy’s response card, and the small, appealing boy on his third birthday, saluting his assassinated father’s casket.
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Now, take the landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969. That day (or rather that night since the landing was in the wee hours of the morning in Europe) I remember clearly; I was taking English classes at Westminster College in Oxford with ten or so other European teenage girls, and working there as a waitress – known as a “Dining Hall Girl”. We were living on the premises: each had a small bedroom furnished with a single bed, covered with a pink chenille embroidered bedspread, an old-fashioned dresser with a mirror, a tiny oak desk, and a sturdy folding chair. There was a common washroom with bathtubs each enclosed in its own wooden surround. We also had at our disposal a large common room equipped with armchairs and a coffee-table, a black and white television set, an upright piano, and a sewing machine. (The latter inspired me to make my own clothes with the help of sewing patterns which I used to buy at Marks & Spencer and Woolworth.) Black and white television sets were standard then, and few people owned or rented a color T.V. When off-duty, we used to watch episodes of “Dad’s Army” - a B.B.C. sitcom about the Home Guard during the Second World War. It was a brilliantly humorous comedy which even today still makes me laugh.
The evening of the landing we all gathered in our lounge to watch the B.B.C. We nodded and smiled as the sounds crackled from the television, but none of us applauded nor cheered when Neil Armstrong spoke. I guess we did not grasp the importance of this “giant leap for mankind”. I must confess that as a passionate reader of the Polish science fiction writer Stanisław Lem’s novels, I felt deeply disappointed, as I expected the astronauts to truly explore the Moon, and not just take “one small step for Man”.
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The next memorable and sensational event which caused great public interest on the world stage was the election in 1978 of Karol Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II - the first non-Italian pope (which was repeatedly emphasized by the media) since the Dutch Adrian VI, who reigned for only one year, from 1522 to 1523. Karol Wojtyła was elected on October the 16th. Being a somewhat “unconnected” person, who rarely read newspapers, listened to the radio or watched T.V., I would certainly have overlooked the event had it not been for an old boyfriend, a journalist, with whom I was having a short romantic interlude. He served me the news along with our morning coffee: “I’ve just heard on the radio that Cardinal Wojtyła has become Pope. Can you imagine?” I just shook my head in a lame attempt to hide my ignorance; I knew nothing about Cardinal Wojtyła at that time, and did not care about popes. I sank into reverie trying to figure out why it did matter or whether it did?
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I spent the summer of 1980 with my friend Ola in Edinburgh. We lived in a remote part of town, sheltered by kindly young teachers, but the majority of our time we spent at the house of a couple who owned a trendy restaurant downtown with murals of rural scenes, which my friend had painted the previous year. This summer, they were employing her to paint rural scenes to complement the murals on an old wardrobe and on a wooden pail; the pail would serve as an umbrella stand.
The summer of 1980 was not a fun summer: the United States and some other countries boycotted the Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Polish shipyard workers were on strike - which aroused interest around the world, and, of course, met with strong disapproval in Russia. My Scottish friend, Graeme, travelled to Moscow to see the games. Back in Edinburgh, he told us about the extremely hostile reception of a Polish pole vault jumper by Soviet spectators, who booed him and whistled at him. Having just secured his gold medal, Kozakiewicz made his Bras d’honneur (an elegant French name for an obscene gesture which carries the same connotation as giving someone the finger) defying the Soviet crowd which later made him famous. During the Olympics, on July the 24th, 1980, the legendary Soviet actor and a singer-songwriter, Vladimir Vysotsky, died of a heart attack. Graeme saw the sad crowds in front of Moscow's Taganka Theater and tried, without success, to buy Vysotsky’s record in the Soviet Union. (He did buy the record later in Paris, where he stopped on his way back.)
I followed the events in the Gdansk shipyard which my artist friend Ola found upsetting: she was sure it was going to end in bloodshed. I didn’t blame her, as developments boded nothing good for the shipyard workers. On the last day of August, our last day in U.K., just as we were on the gangplank in Harwich boarding a ferry to Hoek van Holland, some harbor workers who must had guessed where we were from (how? they heard us speaking and recognized the language?) shouted to us from below: “Hey, they signed the agreement! The Polish shipyard workers won!” We waved to them happily.
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Then there was the assassination attempt on the Pope’s life on Wednesday the 13th of May, 1981, the shocking and incomprehensible act of a Turkish hired killer. While John Paul II was fighting for his life in the Gemelli hospital, people from all over the world were praying for his recovery, and the Poles were dying of anxiety. “If he dies, we’re busted” I told my mother. It was obvious that without the Polish Pope, our fragile Solidarity movement was doomed. The question that troubled us all was, who hired Ali Aǧca? The Bulgarian secret service on behalf of the Soviet Union's security agency, the K.G.B? Probably nobody will ever know. The Pope, luckily, survived, and we could all heave a collective sigh of relief - or so it seemed.
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On December 13, 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, an awkward person with a bizarre sense of humor, and Poland’s then leader, declared “a state of war”, which is the Polish version of martial law: he ordered the army and special police units to seize control of the country, apprehended Solidarity's leaders, and prevented all further union activity. Tanks and other military vehicles poured into Poland’s streets, a curfew was imposed, telephone lines were disconnected, and the country’s borders were sealed.
Three weeks earlier, I had been traveling in Spain with my Dad. On the weekend of November the 20th, we witnessed a creepy and ominous spectacle: hundreds of nostalgic supporters of Franco gathered in Plaza San Juan de la Cruz - the only square in Madrid where a statue of Franco remained - to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death. In the Falangista uniform of blue shirt with the crimson yoked-arrows insignia and a black lanyard looped over the shoulder, with fierce looks on their faces, the supporters performed the Roman salute (also known as “Heil Hitler”). Swastikas and other fascist symbolism was on display. This lasted one weekend: by Monday, the posters had been removed, and the streets swept; no sign remained.
I could had stayed longer in Spain, or gone to Morocco, where my Dad lived and worked at the time, but I decided to cut my trip short because my then boyfriend, a Scot, decided to spend the coming Christmas with me in Poland. He booked his flight for Friday, December the 11th - so I rushed back. It was the beginning of December, and there were rumors that General Jaruzelski had been planning something. According to the radio Free Europe, the “evil empire” was getting impatient and even more evil… Presumably, the Soviet troops were moving toward our borders. All our conversation began with “Will they (meaning the Russians) enter?” It had seemed imminent.
Graeme did not get there as planned: no planes landed in Warsaw on December the 11th - due apparently to a snowstorm. He finally did arrive late the next evening. We decided to spend the night at a mutual friend’s studio on the top floor of a prewar building at the corner of Mokotowska and Koszykowa streets in Warsaw, located by ironic coincidence next to the Solidarity office.
I slept badly that night; some people were screaming on the street below. I took them for drunks. I thought that the bar at the corner was closing, and they got kicked out - hence the loud protests. On Sunday, December the 13th, 1981, our artist friend was taking a shower, while the Scottish guest cooked his daily porridge on a small electric stove in the kitchenette next to the shower stall. Traditional porridge requires a lot of stirring - clockwise (for luck), and simmering for twenty minutes. Still in bed and bored with watching Graeme generating luck, I turned on the radio, which in a twist of fate happened to be tuned to the B.B.C. The announcer - whose voice we heard with difficulty through the crackling static - was saying something about a “state of war”, and “civil war”. It took me a good few seconds to realize, with horror, that he was talking about Poland. My response was that maybe a lack of sleep was playing tricks on me. I looked questioningly at Graeme, who by this time had stopped stirring his porridge, and with his hand suspended in midair, was listening to the news. The look of concern on his face assured me that I had not misheard. We were both dumbfounded. Meanwhile our artist friend, happily unaware of what was going on, was singing in the shower…
I tried to call my mother in Otwock, but the phone lines were dead. (We later learned they had been cut.) We went out onto the street. Helmeted riot police carrying shields and batons were blocking both ends of Mokotowska Street, and no one was allowed to enter the block. After showing his passport to the policeman, Graeme was allowed to go to the British Embassy “for instructions”. At the embassy he was told that the embassy could no longer protect him, and that he should leave Poland as soon as possible - which he did the next day on a charter flight to London, along with other foreigners. This is my memory of the introduction of martial law in Poland which had a dramatic effect on our lives and forced nonconformists to choose “inner emigration”. Poles recall it with sadness and as a very dark period, even darker than the communism itself. (It was lifted, at least partially, in July, 1983.)
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The world remembers the 4th of June, 1989 mainly because of the Tiananmen Square massacre. One particular scene has stuck in the collective memory: the image of a lone man with a shopping bag in each hand, standing before a column of tanks. (Apparently that picture was taken the next day, near the infamous square. To this day, we don't know what had happened to the Tank Man). A Chinese friend later told me that when she heard the shootings, she took her two-year-old son and had walked for hours to get as far as possible from the centre of Beijing.
On the same day, on the other side of the globe in another communist country, Poles were voting in their first free elections since the end of World War II. Watching with horror the events in China, we asked ourselves if the communists in Poland would reject the election results, and start shooting us, following the example of their Chinese counterparts. Provided with an official authorization for observing the elections issued by Solidarity, I sat at the election table at the designated polling station and made sure that the voting process was conducted in an orderly manner. Later I helped to count ballots, and in the morning, the results were posted on the wall of the polling station. There was quite a crowd studying the results in silence. The Solidarity candidates won, by an overwhelming majority. “Is it going to be better now?” one elderly woman asked her son. “I don’t know, mom”, he responded. “But for sure it will be different.”
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In October 1989, my husband and I drove from Poland to West Berlin to buy a computer. While we did not have much time for sightseeing, we managed a stroll on what is known as the most elegant street in Berlin - Ku'damm (Kurfürstendamm), and we walked to the infamous Berlin Wall, where we were able to look into East Berlin from a viewing platform. It was late afternoon, almost sunset, when Ed took my photo with the Wall in the background. Evidently, this was not a popular spot for tourists nor for locals - nobody else was there but us. A week or two later, we were traveling in Peru with a small group of friends. One of them, a professor, read a newspaper every day, and it was he who told us about the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was hard to believe it had happened.
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I was in Poland when Diana, Princess of Wales died on August the 31st, 1997. I don’t recall what I was doing when I first heard the breaking news about the tragic accident in a Paris tunnel, but I remember watching the funeral on TV. And I remember that I sobbed loudly - to the astonishment of my mother and myself. Her life and death were like a romantic drama, like Erich Segal’s film “Love Story” or a soap opera. It felt as if the main goal of the scriptwriter of her life was to make it “cheesy” and bring the audience to tears. I was not the only person who cried in grief at her life’s foolish waste.
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Then, of course, there are the September the 11th attacks: on the morning of Tuesday, September the 11th, 2001, I was driving to work listening to the music of the Bolivian-born artist Oscar Reynolds. My husband Ed and I had recently been on a trip to New Mexico, where we had come upon Mr. Reynolds playing the pan flute in a small outdoor restaurant in Santa Fe. This music invariably brings good memories of the best vacation of my life, which was in Peru, where I fell in love with many things, the pan flute among the others, so we stopped in to listen. I was charmed by the Bolivian artist and his trio. In Oscar’s music there was longing, there was wistfulness, and there was joy there too. I had met someone who, I sensed, felt the same as me - and that is a rare event. I would have stayed with him for the rest of my life if I could have. Alas, it was not to be, so I only bought his CD’s and left. Driving from Cupertino to San Jose on September the 11th and listening to Oscar Reynolds’ music, I was overcome with a longing for something I could not name, but I also felt joy in being a software engineer. It was in this mood that I arrived at work. I noticed, though not right away, that the atmosphere was different, and the people seemed quieter than normal; they were whispering to one another. I overheard my colleague saying, “One plane is still in the air”. I plucked up the courage to ask, “Was there a plane crash today?” My colleagues looked at me in boundless amazement: “You don’t know anything? Don’t you listen to the radio?” And they told me about the four hijacked planes, three of which had already slammed into the World Trade Center in New York and in the Pentagon. One was still unaccounted for …
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I was driving to the cobbler’s to get my shoes fixed in Tualatin, Oregon, where I live, on the morning of the 2nd of April, 2005 when I heard about Pope John Paul II’s death on the radio. I couldn't help but shed a tear on behalf of my compatriots who loved him dearly, regardless of what the world was saying about him (that he was conservative). Polish people have always understood that it is “better to die on your feet than live on your knees”. He had given us the strength to get up, to battle communism. He had helped us regain our pride and dignity as a nation. Without him we would never have made it as far as we had. For this, we should always remember him and be grateful to him.
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Out of these ten milestones, five were uplifting: the landing on the Moon, the election of Karol Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II, the victory of the Polish shipyard workers (Wałęsa and Solidarity), the first free elections in Poland, and the fall of the Berlin Wall; the last four are linked together. It is true that liberals and feminists in the U.S. and elsewhere had different hopes of the Polish Pope than what turned out to be the reality, but if it weren’t for the Polish Pope, there would not have been a Solidarity movement, and without Solidarity, there would not have been free elections in Poland, which in turn led to the fall of communism, and without the fall of communism in Poland, the Berlin Wall would have stood much longer. It was a domino effect. And if one thinks of it, the landing on the Moon had a political aspect too which was to humiliate the Soviets. It appears that everything I remember had some political impact. It is puzzling - for a person who claims to have a lack of interest in politics.
You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories. - Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, a Polish poet and aphorist
