THE SARMATIAN REVIEW Vol. XX, No. 1 January 2000 Die Auswanderer The Central and Eastern Europeans’ Trek to America
The monument honoring emigrants to America in Bremenhafen, Germany. Those who boarded ship in Bremen before the Great War included Poles from Prussian, Russian, and Austrian Poland. Seated at the monument are present-day Turkish immigrants to Germany. Photo by Ewa M. Thompson. 666 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2000 The Sarmatian Review (ISSN 1059- problem in the interview published in this 5872) is a triannual publication of the Polish In- From the Editor issue. With less grace and less Christian stitute of Houston. The journal deals with Polish, This issue is devoted to the relationship charity, some colleagues told me that they Central, and Eastern European affairs, and their between America’s Central and Eastern have endured ignorance and boorishness implications for the United States. We specialize European ethnic communities and the of some Central European intellectuals in the translation of documents. intelligentsia in Central and Eastern Eu- Subscription price is $15.00 per year for individu- who visit these shores courtesy of Ameri- als, $21.00 for institutions and libraries ($21.00 rope. can sponsorship. Some Polish immi- for individuals, $27.00 for libraries overseas, air Some time ago, a colleague complained grants whose books are read only in Po- mail). The views expressed by authors of articles that his book on Polish American history land and who play negligible roles in do not necessarily represent those of the Editors which received favorable reviews in pro- or of the Polish Institute. Articles are subject to American society have been showered editing. Unsolicited manuscripts and other mate- fessional journals in the United States was with Polish prizes, while Polish Ameri- rials are not returned unless accompanied by a self- ignored in Poland. Other than writing that can writers and organizational leaders addressed and stamped envelope. Please submit book, the professor had spent countless who have made a mark on this society your contribution on a Macintosh disk together hours arranging visits to the United States with a printout. Letters to the Editor can be e- and whose interventions have made it mailed to
1234567890123456789012345678901212345678 English than poorly in Polish. 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678 The complex dance between Poles, recent Polish immi- 670 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2000 grants, and third and fourth generation Polish Americans tion of thatched-roofed huts, with storks nesting on the all to often ends in confusion and frustration for all con- chimneys and people dancing in colorful folk costumes. cerned. At the heart of the problem is a tangled thicket of The contrast with the modern, urbane, well-educated im- misperceptions each group has about each other and about migrant could not be more dramatic. Many Polish immi- themselves. grants are quite blunt about Polish Americans’ failure to No group has a single point of view or a wholly unified measure up. The extreme example of this was Czeslaw background, yet we can point to two distinct groups who- Milosz’s cruel, calculated, and unfair public attack on come into contact with each other most frequently: Pol- Polish Americans in The New York Times in 1987, com- ish Americans whose families arrived in America during ments that did immense damage to Polonia, since they the great wave of immigration between 1870 and 1922, came from a Pole many in Polonia idolized. and more recent Polish immigrants. In between is a group The problems are not all on one side of the ledger, how- of immigrants and refugees and their children who ar- ever; we see many Polish Americans—especially within rived after World War II. Despite many conflicts in the the leadership—who feel Poland would be much better 1950s between the older Polonia and these refugees, to- off if they were in charge. This stems from the long-held day they enjoy largely harmonious relations. belief among some that American Polonia carried the torch Class conflicts in Polonia are nothing new. Helena Stas’ of Poland’s national spirit during the long darkness of 1911 novel Na ludzkim targu (In the Human Market) pro- foreign occupation. Although this belief is not wholly vides a bitter commentary on the attitude of literary elites without foundation, the ways it is stated are guaranteed to toward second-generation Polish Americans. Those con- irritate. flicts, like the later conflicts between post-war refugees This is not to say that relations between Poles and Pol- and Polish Americans, are a relic of the past and their ish Americans are necessarily all bad. To the contrary, fading over time gives one hope that current attitudes will there are often good relations and mutual friendships. The change for the better. In the meantime, however, such at- problems stem not so much from ill will as from funda- titudes do severe damage to Polonia which it cannot af- mental misunderstandings about culture. Polish Ameri- ford. cans are not Poles, nor are they identical to other Ameri- Differences between Poles (especially recent immi- cans. No culture is pure and all immigrants, regardless of grants) and Polish Americans stem from many sources. when they arrive or what their background is, are changed Perhaps the greatest of these is simple lack of knowledge by the experience of living in a different culture. Polish about each other and about themselves. Poles have little American culture—in all its forms—is a hybrid contain- understanding of Polonia and Polish Americans. The same ing both Polish and American elements to varying de- can largely be said of Polish Americans themselves, for grees. It is a product of generations of creative adapta- the history, mentality, and culture of Polonia has been all tion. This is the only way Polish immigrants and their but ignored and when it had been seriously studied, those children could have maintained an ethnic identity in studies have not reached the general public. Furthermore, America. This creativity needs to be appreciated for what a serious intra-community discourse about what it means it is, by Poles and especially by Polish Americans who all to be a Polish American in this day and age has been ham- too often wallow in self-hate for not being “Polish enough” pered by a lack of effective ways to communicate within compared to “real Poles.” the community. Among major obstacles are the follow- The notion that there is only one unchanging form of ing: virtually no access to mainstream media, and a cen- Polish culture that is accessible only to a few chosen in- tral leadership in the main umbrella organization that with terpreters is ultimately a stultifying one. Culture is far more few exceptions is crudely anti-intellectual. flexible, interesting, and enduring than we realize. The Poles who encounter Polish Americans often do not see fact that most Polish Americans cannot speak Polish does them as fellow Poles, but as Americans or sham Poles. At not mean they are un-Polish or “sham Poles.” Few Irish best, they isolate themselves from Polish Americans, and speak Gaelic. Is Irish identity in America dead? Obvi- at worst they are openly contemptuous, especially in front ously not. Other groups have also retained a strong cul- of non-Polish Americans. All of this greatly furthers the tural identity without language retention. It is obvious that “cleansing” of America of Polish ethnicity. in the immigration culture will change, often quite dra- Polish Americans, by contrast, following a long isola- matically. But then culture in the homeland undergoes tion from Poland, are at first apt to see anyone or any- constant change as well. thing coming from Poland as wonderful. Few can con- The long years of foreign domination have forced ceive of Poland as a modern nation rather than a collec- Poles—wherever they live—to value culture and fear January 2000 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 671 change in that culture, since that change was so often States appeared from Southern Methodist University Press forced and manipulated from the outside. Such an atti- in 1993. Although a first volume of stories, Twelve Be- tude is, however, a relic of the past and could quickly turn low Zero (1986), had translation options taken on it by into narrow-mindedness. Feltrinelli in Italy, Contact in Holland, and Eichborn Verlag Better relations between Poles and Polish Americans in West Germany, I never considered the prospect of hav- must be predicated on more learning, more scholarship, ing a book in my grandparents’ language, which would and more conversations. Both have something to say to mean so much to a grandson of immigrants. During the each other and both deserve to be heard. ∆ time she was seeking a publisher, I read in the trade pub- lications about the economics of publishing in Poland in the early 1990s and doubted Monika Garbowska, despite The Far and the Near her attempts, would succeed. Still, working in my behalf, she wrote on March 16, 1993 that, although she had not An American Writer’s Commerce with Polish written me for a time, Intellectuals this does not mean . . . I have abandoned the Anthony Bukoski idea of finding a Polish publisher for your stories. The problem is that with Poland’s switch to the market economy, most pub- I am grateful that Polish academics and at least two edi- lishers are interested in very quick profits. tors of Polish journals have been interested in my short The market is . . . unstable, dozens of new stories. So, too, have Polish émigré, and Polish-Ameri- publishing houses appear and most of them can intellectuals promoted the stories as well as other go bankrupt after publishing one or two Polish-American writers’ works. Thomas Napierkowski books. has done this for me in his essays; Thomas Gladsky in Princes, Peasants, and Other Polish Selves: Ethnicity in Alarmed at the flood of “second-rate literature: Har- American Literature; Małgorzata åwikliƒska as editor lequin romances, crime and horror stories, interviews with and publisher of Gwiazda Polarna and its English lan- well-known politicians, etc.” and saying how difficult it guage supplement GP Light; John Radziłowski, who as was to find publishers willing to try “more ambitious president of the Polish American Cultural Institute of literature,” she hoped the situation would grow “more Minnesota has arranged an author’s reading under the stable in the nearest future.” Nothing finally came of her aegis of that organization; and Stanislaus Blejwas, who efforts to place the book, but my gratitude to her for rep- has provided inspiration through his essays. Also, Zofia resenting me to Polish publishers. Smardz has helped this writer in a New York Times Book Her generosity was evident again in 1995 when Review review; Katarzyna Kietlinska in a Periphery re- Monika Kwiecieƒ began a correspondence with me this view; Tomasz Tabako by publishing an essay in 2B: A way: Journal of Ideas; and Angela Brintlinger by using two of my stories in a course at The Ohio State University. I am writing you on [the] advice of my Pro- My commerce with the intelligentsia in Poland, how- fessor, Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, who ever, began when Professor Thomas Napierkowski of the is the supervisor of my MA thesis. I am a University of Colorado at Colorado Springs brought a graduate student of English language and literature at the English Institute at the Maria short story to the attention of Monika Adamczyk- Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. Garbowska, editor of Akcent, a journal in Lublin. Trans- Last year we discussed some of your sto- lated by Ewa Pyczek and published as a companion piece ries at our seminar and . . . I have decided to to Napierkowski’s “Po1scy sàsiedzi. Proza Anthony’ego write my MA thesis on your work (my ten- Bukoskiego” was the story “Dzieci obcych ludzi, Chil- tative topic is a comparative study of your dren of Strangers.” In time this would become the title of and Danuta Mostwin’s stories). my second short story collection. After publishing the story in Akcent (No.1/2, 1990), Between the Old and New Customs: The Emergence Professor Adamczyk-Garbowska, with much gracious- of a New Tradition, which also discussed Suzanne ness—which represents the tenor of my relations with Strempek Shea, whose first novel had by then been pub- Polish intellectuals—broached the idea of finding a Pol- lished, was completed two years later in 1997. I was ish publisher for Children of Strangers, which in the United pleased not only with this Polish graduate student’s inter- 672 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2000 est in Children of Strangers, but also pleased to be in the believe Polish contemporary literature company of Danuta Mostwin and Suzanne Strempek Shea. needs. Then in a special issue of Akcent no. 2, 1997, entitled “Polscy Amerykanie,” Adamczyk-Garbowska supported Again, the kindness I met with from Monika Adamczyk- this Polish-American writer yet again. In addition to work Garbowska when my stories traveled to Poland in 1990 I by Polish writers, the issue contained academic and per- now found from Andrzej WaÊko. sonal essays, poems, a novel fragment, and short stories Largely because of John Merchant’s essay and in small by these writers in the United States: John Guzlowski, part because of my introduction through the mail to Pro- Helen Degen Cohen, Thomas Gladsky, Thomas fessor WaÊko in Poland, Maciej Urbanowski, a professor Napierkowski, Anna Frajlich-Zajac, Professor Mostwin, at the Jagiellonian who spent the 1998-99 academic year and Ms. Shea, plus an interview with me and the story “A teaching at the University of Illinois-Chicago, together Chance of Snow” from Children of Strangers, published with Merchant, arranged for an interview in late Febru- as “Szansa na Ênieg.” Moreover, possibly as a result of ary when I would be in southern Wisconsin reading from Monika Garbowska’s earlier publishing Napierkowski’s a new short story collection Polonaise (1999). Madison— “Polscy sàsiedzi” essay, that piece appeared in English in Wisconsin’s capitol city and home of the University of Polish Anglo-Saxon Studies published at the University Wisconsin—lies two hours northwest of Chicago and so of Poznaƒ. would mean a four-or-five hour round trip drive for them, Thus my entrée to publishing in Poland. Other good no small investment of time. Yet Maciej Urbanowski’s fortune occurred when a young American academic desire to meet before he left the country and John brought my stories to the attention of another editor in Merchant’s determination to arrange the meeting resulted Poland. Soon after Sarmatian Review (January 1998) in a warm, enthusiastic, occasionally intense three-or-four published John Merchant’s “Recent Polish-American Fic- hour exchange of ideas on, and impressions of, life and tion” discussing Stuart Dybek’s, Suzanne Strempek literature in Poland and the United States. Shea’s, Denise Dee’s, and my work. The essay’s author, Not long after that good, gray, bracing Madison, Wis- currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Chi- consin, afternoon (our meeting brought the promise of cago, was preparing to read his piece in Polish at the early spring), Maciej Urbanowski wrote from Chicago: Jagiellonian University. While there he proposed that Arcana consider publishing one or two of Dybek’s and As I mentioned we would like to publish my stories, which resulted in a fruitful exchange of letters [the] interview in Arcana, probably in July with Andrzej WaÊko at the journal, whose comments are or September issue of our bimonthly. Soon I will send you an English version of this especially relevant to the topic, how I, or we Polish-Ameri- interview for your agreement. As I know can writers, have been treated by Polish intellectuals. from my friends in Poland, a translation of Having read the 1997 Akcent interview and Children of one of your stories is already ready. Another Strangers and having spoken with Arcana editor Andrzej one is translated by Leszek Elektorowicz, a Nowak, Professor WaÊko wrote that translating a story or very good translator . . . . I hope [the] two two into Polish for Arcana would be “desirable, thanks to translations will be published . . . with the their documentary importance for the Polish American interview. I hope also that it will be a begin- experience in the past and the present days.” He then went ning of your more often presence in Poland. on: And so it has gone over a decade—other Americans’ in Poland, as you probably know, the inter- and my own work welcomed in Akcent and Polish Anglo- est in all things American is big, but there is Saxon Studies, discussed in an M. A. thesis, and now, per- still little knowledge about this branch of haps, to appear in Arcana. From my very limited view, I American literature you represent: “Recent think bonds are forming because of catalysts in this coun- Polish-American Fiction,” as John Merchant try like Thomas Napierkowski, John Merchant, and Tho- calls it. Of course Akcent is doing good mas Gladsky, who along with Adam Wałaszek in Kraków work. Arcana has already published a sub- has hosted several Polish and American Cultural Con- stantial article of John (you probably know nections conferences, and because of Monika Adamczyk- it, because it was published also in Sarmatian Review). We would like to make Garbowska, Andrzej WaÊko, and Maciej Urbanowski in our own contribution for establishment of Poland. As Polish-American literature continues devel- contacts between Polish readers and Polish- oping (witness the publication of three novels by Polish American writers. This is something I firmly Americans in the past year—Suzanne Strempek Shea’s January 2000 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 673 Lily of the Valley, Leslie Pietrzyk’s Pears on a Willow tiques of that tradition written from the anti-colonialist, Tree, and Geraldine Głodek’s Nine Bells at the Breaker; feminist, or other perspectives. Yet historicist readings can of Stuart Dybek’s novella “Orchids” in DOUBLETAKE; enrich and broaden the traditional readings of literature. of John Guzlowski’s very beautiful, moving poetry chap- Shakespeare’s Tempest CAN be construed as partaking of book Language of Mules; and of my own Polonaise: Sto- the easy stereotypes of “primitives” and “barbarians” ries)—as our literature continues developing, one knows which first world gentlemen like to invoke from their the bonds with Poland will strengthen even more. ∆ leather armchairs and pulpits (the leather comes from countries where they treat animals in a barbarous way, of course). A People Apart: The Jews in Europe 1789–1939, BOOKS BOOKS and by David Vital. Oxford–New York. Oxford Univer- Periodicals Received sity Press. 1999. 976 pages. Hardcover. $45.00. At War with the Word: Literary Theory and Lib- Like Iwo Pogonowski’s Jews in Poland (1993), Vital’s book speaks of Jews in Europe, rather than Jews of Eu- eral Education, by R. V. Young. Wilmington, DE. rope, thus emphasizing the troubled relationship between Intercollegiate Studies Institute. 1999. xii + 199 pages. this minority and the European states. Some of these states Index, bibliography. Hardcover. $24.95. granted Jews full civil rights but virtually never followed A major work discussing the process of “dehumanizing” up with a recognition of the special place that Jews oc- the humanities at Western universities during the last sev- cupy in history and therefore in the present. Vital points eral decades. The author points out that “traditional hu- out that both among Jews and Gentiles there arose a manist scholars . . . saw themselves as being engaged in a distinction between unassimilated and assimilated Jews; dialogue with a work of human intellect and imagina- often acceptance was granted to the latter only. Vital also tion,” while postmodernist scholars attempt to be “clini- points out that the rise of European nationalisms in the cally indifferent” toward “the human sciences.” The lit- nineteenth and twentieth centuries marginalized Jews in erary works are treated as “anthills and beehives” rather states which gained or regained independence after World than products of a “rational free will.” The sources of War I and which excluded from their newly (re)gained such attitudes are sought in a rejection of the Enlighten- identity Jewish presence and Jewish history. ment which in turn was a rejection of an earlier and fun- One might add here that, ironically, a similar process damentally Western world view based on belief in the of exclusion is now going on with regard to other minori- Logos. The rejection of logocentrism proceeded through ties. E.g., the ebullient Lithuanian identity excludes Poles several stages, and Young details them with admirable from political life and from presence in Lithuanian his- clarity and competence. His discussions of Derrida and tory. In Poland, the Jewish component of Polish history Nietzsche could be used in the classroom. He points out is only marginally noted in standard textbooks, and much that the différance of which the deconstructionists speak remains to be done to integrate Jewish presence in Po- was familiar to Christian saints and philosophers, from land with mainstream Polish history without alienating Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, and that the “lack” around either group. Vital praises those Jews who, early in the which the philosophers have built their arguments lately twentieth century, recognized that Jewish presence in is a déja vu from the Christian perspective. His concise Europe was nearing its end, and that it was essential for discussion of historicism (Foucault, Lentricchia) is like- Jews to have their own state. The author is a historian and wise suitable for classroom use. He ends the book with a a sympathizer of Zionism which he credits with saving discussion of literary works which he himself teaches in the remnants of Jewry after the Holocaust. his English courses. Na kraƒcu długiego pola i inne wiersze z lat 1988– While the book is recommended, it is not without short- 1998 (at the end of a large field and other poems, comings. A major one is its inability to see some good in 1988–1998), by Krzysztof Koehler. Warszawa. historicism and deconstruction. The historicist notion of Biblioteka Frondy (ul. Reymonta 30/16, 01-842 the dominant discourse was skillfully used in Edward Said’s Orientalism, among others, and for good reason: Warszawa). 1998. 191 pages. Paper. In Polish. it provides an explanation of what it means to write “be- The volume demonstrates a growing maturity of this in- fore” or “after” one’s time. The defenders of the Western tensely moral and religious poet. Koehler is one of the tradition (Young among them) are often unable to con- major poets writing in Polish today. There is something struct their argument in such a way as to encompass cri- of Wallace Stevens in him: his Romanticism is restrained and his love of nature subdued in a sophisticated fashion. 674 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2000 He is certainly not a poet for the masses, the way Czeslaw Of particular interest is the chapter on Polish culture in Milosz, Wisława Szymborska or even Zbigniew Herbert World War I written, by Harold B. Segel, and one on Jew- have been. Koehler teaches at Rice University in 1999– ish culture during the same period, by Aviel Roshwald. 2000: an opportunity to invite him to visit still beckons. Both chapters synthesize a large body of documentation European Culture in the Great War: The Arts, and interpretation. The book broadens the discursive space Entertainment, and Propaganda, 1914–1918, ed- considerably, and it is a fascinating read. One complaint— ited by Aviel Roshwald and Richard Stites. Cam- which we recently lodged in regard to another Cambridge bridge, UK. Cambridge University Press (The University Press book, Faith Wigzell’s Reading Russian Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, CB2 2RU). 1999. Fortunes—is a sizeable number of typographical mistakes. Lily of the Valley, by Suzanne Strempek Shea. xii + 430 pages. Illustrations, notes, index. Hardcover. The book deserves praise for many reasons, not the least New York, Pocket Books. 1999. 273 pages. Hard- of which is that it returns to the conception of “Europe” cover. $22.00. as it existed before the rise of the Ottoman and Russian As was the case with Strempek Shea’s previous novels, Empires (both of twhich seized chunks of what had ear- this too is a novel about Polish Americans and their ordi- lier been regarded as “Europe” in the cultural sense). It nary life. But unlike the first two , this one is intensely deepens these earlier notions in that it adds the Jewish Polish-patriotic and American-patriotic. When supermar- contribution to Europe. All too often Jews were subsumed ket queen and local millionnairess, Mary Ziemba, asks in other categories, while the East Central European na- the heroine (and the narrator) to paint a picture of herself tions were made invisible by the empires which had swal- amidst the relatives whose photographs Ziemba had pre- lowed them. served, we get a whiff of Polish history, its tragedies and The book concentrates on mass culture rather than on glories, sweat and strain. The mysteries of nationhood, of “high” culture, and it includes art, music, and propaganda, belonging, of having a past, of having a dignity which in addition to belles lettres. Its fourteen chapters (each comes from having a past are all before us. Ms. Ziemba’s written by an author specializing in a particular topic) are life suggests to us that people without a past are like straw, summarized by the Editors in Conclusion. The French while those who possess it carry it as a burden, but also as tended to be racist aduring World War I, while the Ger- a treasure that gives them joy and pride. mans indulged in a lust for destruction and conquest. The Defiantly, Strempek Shea foregrounds every conceiv- Russians borrowed from the Germans and then added able expression and situation signalling the lower middle some of their own mythology about the “Slavic soul,” class lifestyle, like “Buoys/Gulls” printed on lavatories at while the Jews idealized their Eastern European shtetl. a fish-and-chips place in New England owned by Leo The editors favor the conception of modernism as “a and Alice Baldyga (nee Szczpiorski), or the narrator’s backlash against the alienating materialism and stultify- dream of a n exhibit of her artworks during which “wine ing rationalism of industrial modernity.” (Introduction) in two colors” would be served by tuxedoed waiters. The cult of the irrational which began in art at that time The innocence of Strempek Shea’s first two novels has was part of that backlash. The process was particularly been lost, as it inevitably must happen when heroines and/ far advanced in Germany. The editors note the or writers mature. The heroine is divorced, and she falls politicization of art during the war, a phenomenon that in love with a divorced guy. While in Hoopi Shoopi Donna has remained with us ever since. Thus the Czechs favored the heroine’s dream had been to become the leader of a modernistic styles as a form of opposition to the tradi- polka band, here she and her beloved visit museums of tionalist Habsburg empire, while the French used tradi- impressionist art, circulate within the UMass crowd (her tionalist art to express their nationalistic feelings. Percep- brother graduates from the University of Massachussets), tively, the editors note that during the Great War, auto- and ponder the secrets of great art. Her sister makes it big cratic regimes lost control of popular culture, while the in the theater world, and subsequently stops attending “the British regime, being more democratic in nature, retained real church” in favor of an “Eastern” religion. Her par- it. The war also marked an end to the dreams of cosmo- ents gamble—successfully, as it turns out. Her brother politanism and the hope of transcending nationalism which once stole money from Catholic Charities. some artists had cherished. It made it starkly clear that To appreciate this novel, one has to possess a certain “between the individual and humanity stands the nation,” amount of sympathy for lower middle class America, for to quote the German economist Friedrich List. The book its struggles and aspirations, and its ability to practice mod- seems to be based on a form of essentialism that is funda- eration in all things. This novel celebrates the white East mental to European culture. European ethnics who made it in America without any January 2000 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 675 handouts. They have not been commemorated in the great claims the heritage of the earlier story.” Tucked in-be- masterpieces that grace the interiors of America’s muse- tween these two writers are Elisabeth Stern, Anzia ums and libraries. Poles are the largest group among these Yezierska, and Maria Kuncewicz. Zaborowska is consis- ethnics, comprising almost nine million citizens, accord- tent in her lack of interest in reconstruction, the tradi- ing to the latest census. Quite apart from being a good tional topic of books such as hers; instead, she concen- novelist, Strempek Shea deserves the gratitude of ethnic trates on what the Russians call stolknovenie, or confron- America for taking up their problems and their “lifestyle,” tation, between the female tradition of the old world, and and converting them into narrative art. the somewhat different expectations which the new world Not only is the heroine older, wiser, and less innocent, has of females. The center of attention is a realization that but she has also emerged from the amusing poverty in the immigrant female has to follow “the narrative pre- which the author had placed her in earlier novels. Now scribed for her” in the new culture. The struggle (the she wears sandals that cost $150—she buys them on sale, Bakhtinian “dialogue”) between this prescription and the of course. authors’ wish not to be pigeonholed is the focus of the The novel is not just Polish American; it is also Catho- author’s attention. To put it plainly, the immigrant women lic. It conveys a universal message: all people around us discover that they are expected to behave in the tradition- are our brothers and sisters, or rather, they could become ally feminine ways in the new land, notwithstanding the our brothers as sisters if we so wished and if we made an fact that almost everything else was changing in America effort instead of complaining of loneliness. But this during the period of their acculturation. broader message is sometimes awkwardly delivered. Im- The reason for mentioning trees and forest at the begin- probable situations abound. A rich self-made spinster res- ning of this review lies here. All cultures are prescribed cues a homeless teenager. He becomes a model citizen, narratives, and because of that they are sitting ducks for she leaves her estate to him, and he in turn rewards the attacks against them by outsiders. The emerging feminist narrator/artist generously (she had been commissioned to culture appears to be no less static, confining, and intoler- do the portrait of the spinster, but she had never been paid). ant. In today’s academic scholarship in humanities, A nearly total lack of greed and resentment, and an al- Zaborowska’s postmodern methodology is the prescribed most monkish moral perfection enveloping the charac- one, a point which somehow fails to register with those ters at the end, detract from the realism of this novel. who complain about discriminatory elements in tradition- How We Found America: Reading Gender alist culture. through East European Immigrant Narratives, by Complaints about being pigeonholed by Old World and Magdalena J. Zaborowska. Chapel Hill & London. New World cultures are really complaints about the hu- University of North Carolina Press (P. O. Box 2288, man condition. It is too bad that talented writers like Chapel Hill, NC 27515–2288). 1995. xii + 359 pages. Zaborowska are so entirely swayed into believing that one can bypass that condition as it were, and that what Index. Paper. No price given. really matters in scholarship is to show cracks in cultures Written from a historicist postmodern perspective and rather than their sustaining value. supported by the author’s ability to extract details from Polish Literature: From the Middle Ages to the End books and memoirs authored by the educated segment of of the Eighteenth Century. A Bilingual Anthology. Ed- East European immigration to America, this eloquent book ited and translated by Michael J. MikoÊ. Warsaw. nevertheless comes close to not seeing the forest for the Constans Publishers. ISBN 83-901012-3-2. 683 pages. trees. The author uses memoirs and novels written by im- Hardcover. No price given. migrants not to “reconstruct” immigrant experience but This comprehensive anthology covers Polish literature rather to provide a close reading of the text itself, inter- from the Middle Ages (starting with the Polish Chronicle preting texts rather than experience, in a post-Derridean of Gallus Anonymous) to the eighteenth century. The fashion. She is interested in the creation of tradition which editor’s unfortunate use of the word “Enlightenment” for she claims began when Mary Antin, a Russian Jewish Polish eighteenth-century writings follows the traditional– immigrant, published her autobiography in 1912. The tra- and outdated–periodization of Polish literature, and it dition was continued by Eva Hoffman, an immigrant from mislabels authors who for most part labored in total sepa- Poland, who published Lost in Translation: A Life in a ration from the Scottish Enlightenment and its method- New Language (1989). Hoffman mentions Antin as her ologies which are generally identifed with the Enlighten- spiritual predecessor, and Zaborowska opines that ment in the English-speaking world. The book covers “Hoffman’s text is a clear continuation of Antin’s narra- religious literature of the Middle Ages, the Golden Age tive of acculturation; it acknowledges this similarity and 676 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2000 of Polish literature during the Renaissance (Klemens acquired in improbable conditions evokes admiration. The Janicki, Marcin Bielski, Biernat z Lublina, Marcin book describes the usual fate of religious dissidents un- Kromer, Andrzej Frycz-Modrzewski, Łukasz Górnicki, der the Soviets: interrogation by the KGB, harassment, Wawrzyniec GoÊlicki, Piotr Skarga, Mikołaj Rej, Jan secret meetings with the like-minded people, more ha- Kochanowski, Mikołaj S∏p-Szarzyƒski, and many oth- rassment, emigration under duress (the author was given ers), the Baroque or “Sarmatian” period in the seventeenth the choice of emigration or the gulag), minor notoriety in century (the Morsztyns, Daniel Naborowski, Wacław the 1980s, speeches given in various countries and, fi- Potocki, Wespazjan Kochowski, Maciej Sarbiewski, nally, quiet obscurity. Samuel Twardowski, Jan Chryzostom Pasek, and others), At the time of publication of this book, Ms. Goricheva and the “Enlightenment” period (Stanisław Konarski, lived in Paris, and she was fulsome in praising the Rus- Wacław Rzewuski, Adam Naruszewicz, Ignacy Krasicki, sian clergy, Russian spirituality, Russian this and Russian Stanisław Trembecki, Konstancja Benisławska, Alojzy that… while at the same time complaining that the West Feliƒski, Kazimierz Brodziƒski, and others). Each excerpt lacked real priests and real spirituality, and that it was is accompanied by notes; there are also introductions to naive and backward, somewhat like Russia in the nine- each section. It would have been useful to enclose biblio- teenth century. How well we know that destructive shal- graphical information about the earlier English editions lowness of Russian complaints about the West on which of the works excerpted. E. g., Wawrzyniec GoÊlicki’s opus the tyrannical Russian political system has feasted for cen- was previously (and opulently) published by the Institute turies. The wonderful Russian dissidents behave nobly in of Polish Culture in Florida, while Jan Chryzostom Pasek’s their homeland, and then relocate abroad where they be- Memoirs had previously been published in two separate come propagandists for Russia, instead of fighting against English translations. These reservations notwithstanding, Russia so that Russians could begin to live better. As thanks are due to Professor MikoÊ for his extensive work long as people like Ms. Goricheva do not abandon their in creating a basic library of works for courses in Polish idea of tsarist Russia being “holy Russia,” there is little literature in translation. hope that the Russian Federation would ever become a The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier, by Jakob democratic entity. Walter. Edited and with an Introduction by Marc Her Diary was written during the years of Solidarity Raeff. New York. Doubleday. 1991. xxx + 161 pages. and of the Russian-induced martial law in Poland, yet our Chronology, place names, illustrations. Hardcover. $20.00. author does not devote even one line to those develop- Eastern Europe’s popular mythology sees Napoleon’s ments. Her chauvinistic self-centeredness is all too evi- march on Moscow as a triumphant progression, while his dent. For all her religious exaltation, we have to describe retreat is seen as a tragedy. This memoir of a Westphalian her as a Russia-obsessed person whose faith in God did German drafted into Napoleon’s army gives us the view not broaden her horizons enough to make her realize that from the pew as it were. The territories which Bonaparte’s Russians are not central to the world, and that freedom army crossed were so impoverished by previous looting will not come to Russia until the Russians themselves and suppression that even in friendly territories (Poland- grant freedom to the non-Russian subjects of the “Rus- Lithuania-Belarus) provisions were scarce, and the steal- sian” Federation. Thus, while the book contains some un- ing and slaughtering of animals for food was done in ap- questionably Christian moments, it also demonstrates a palling conditions. War indeed is hell. A useful przyczynek lack of historical knowledge among Russians and their to the history of the period. inability to abandon their parochial perspective. Talking About God Is Dangerous: The Diary of a Poland’s Navy: 1918–1945, by Michael Alfred Russian Dissident, by Tatiana Goricheva. Translated by Peszke. New York. Hippocrene Books (171 Madison John Bowden from the German. Chicago–New York. Avenue, New York, NY 10016). 1999. xii + 222 pages. Crossroad Publishing Co. (370 Lexington Avenue, New Index, bibliography. Hardcover. $29.95. York, NY 10017). 1987. 103 pages. Hardcover. $11.95. A comprehensive history of the Navy in the Second Pol- The book deals with the 1970s and 1980s in the ethni- ish Republic, with an introductory chapter outlining Pol- cally Russian part of the Soviet Union. However, the ish contacts with the Baltic since the eleventh century. USSR is presented as if it were a nation state and not a Alas, unlike the British, the Poles never developed a sea- colonial empire. This is a common failing of Russian au- faring spirit in those centuries when navies ruled the world. thors, both left-wing and right-wing, and it has contrib- Still, the history is competently written and it stands ready uted to misreadings of Russian history in the West. to become a reference work. The author’s unshakeable religious faith which she had Ukraiƒski modernizm: Próba periodyzacji procesu January 2000 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 677 historycznoliterackiego, by Agnieszka Korniejenko. Soviet expansionism and inhuman policies of the Sovi- Kraków. Universitas (al. 3 Maja 7, IV pi∏tro, 30–063 ets hurt Russia profoundly, a fact which Mr. Remnick fails Kraków). 1998. 322 pages. Paper. Summary in English. to analyze. Price not given. In Polish. The Art of Political War, by David Horowitz. Los An analysis of trends in Ukrainian literature between Angeles, CA. The Committee for a Non–Liberal Ma- 1900–1960. In spite of a lack of statehood (Ukraine was jority (P. O. Box 67128, Los Angeles, CA 90067). partitioned between two states, Poland and the Soviet 1999. 48 pages. Paper. $3.95. Union), Ukrainians managed to create a cohesive litera- In this clearly partisan booklet, David Horowitz pulls no ture which has traditionally been divided into three cur- punches in advising political activists how to become ef- rents: nationalistic, Catholic, and communist. However, fective. He has certainly practiced what he preaches: a the author points out that this simplistic division does not one-time leftist radical, he is now a leading neocon. It reflect the complexities of Ukrainian political and liter- obviously took considerable political skills to sail from ary situation. The author teaches at Jagiellonian Univer- prominence in one movement to prominence in a move- sity in Kraków. ment that is directly opposed to the first one. Some Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia, by Pollyannish ethnic activists might learn quite a bit from David Remnick. New York. Random House. 1997. Horowitz’s sober assessment of what political struggles xiii + 398 pages. Notes on sources, Bibliography. in society are all about, and how political relationships Hardcover. $25.95. are nurtured and maintained. This ideologically-loaded book follows in the wake of Ludmiła Murawska: An Exhibit Sponsored by the dozens of similar books about Russia published in the Toruƒ Muzeum and the University of Toruƒ, 2 July– 1970s and 1980s by journalists and officials who hap- 20 August 1999. Prepared by Mirosław Supruniuk. pened to have been stationed in that country. Russia used Toruƒ. Archiwum Emigracji Biblioteki to “sell” because of the stiff snort of irrationality which it Universyteckiej. 1999. Paper. provided to level-headed Americans. Indeed, it used to A remarkable Catalog containing two interviews with be enough to spend a few months in Moscow to come up Ludmiła Murawska, painter and actress, whose “Teatr with books like My Russian Journey. Times have changed, Osobny Trzech Osób” consisted of herself, Miron and Remnick’s book is probably one of the last ones try- Białoszewski and Ludwik Hering. Striking reproductions ing to ride the wave of gratuitous notoriety which a post- of paintings and theater decor. ing in Russia used to provide. Remnick is a great namedropper. Well-positioned in Other Books and Periodicals Received: Moscow as an American correspondent, he brushed shoul- My Name Is Million: An Illustrated History of the Poles ders with the rich and powerful in the new Russian state. in America, by W. S. Kuniczak. 2d ed. New York. He spoke to and interviewed writers, journalists, think Hippocrene Books. 2000. 298 pages. Index, illustrations. tank commentators, and ordinary Muscovites. Names Hardcover. $24.95. alone can make a book publishable; imagine someone Originally published in 1978 by Doubleday, this popular who talked to Gorbachev on a number of occasions and history of Polish Americans is authored by a notable trans- could quote Gorbachev verbatim. This forgettable 400- lator of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novels. page chat opines that Russia “undoubtedly will reassert Akcent: literatura i sztuka. A quarterly (20–022 Lublin, itself in the twenty first century” and that people like Henry Kissinger are “Russophobes.” Remnick bemoans the dra- ul. Okopowa 7, Poland). No. 2(68), 1997. 211 pages. matic drop of interest in things Russian throughout Ameri- The issue is devoted to Americans of Polish background. can academia, but he seems not to know that the previ- It abounds in wishful thinking. Even Thomas Gladsky ously inflated enrollments reflected not only our fascina- (who contributed an article) could not resist the tempta- tion with Russian culture but also, and primarily, the once- tion of drawing a rosier picture of Polish America than is formidable arsenal of weapons which Russia squeezed warranted by reality. But excerpts from Suzanna Strempek out of the populations it exploited. Shea’s Selling the Lite of Heaven and Anthony Bukoski’s Three years have passed since the book had been pub- short story “A Chance of Snow” indicate that Akcent treats lished, and the volume reads more like history than a nar- the issue of Polish Americans more seriously than has rative about something that is happening here and now. been the case with the various “polonijne publikacje” in The tome’s rapid aging corresponds to Russia’s aging, Poland. literally and metaphorically. The legacy of tsarist and 678 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2000 Thaddeus KoÊciuszko: the Purest flowers. KoÊciuszko’s seldom warranted even a single rose. Son of Liberty Piłsudski was the hard cynical realist who valued his British and French allies pretty much for what they were By James S. Pula. New York. Hippocrene Books. worth. He was the military genius whose strategy had led 1999. Bibliography, 3 appendices, illustrations. 357 to victory over the Russians: the only war the Soviets ever pages. Hardcover. lost before they lost the Cold War. Piłsudski had more than the whiff of Bonaparte about him, adored by his sol- diers and willing to execute coup d’etat when he deemed James R. Thompson it necessary. KoÊciuszko, in contrast, seemed to be the cameo ideal- Though without an index, this is is one of the more inter- ist, the man too loyal, too naive, too modest to be effec- esting biographies of KoÊciuszko to appear since World tive. Whereas Piłsudski had beaten the Russians, War II. It looks at KoÊciuszko’s activities in America and KoÊciuszko had been beaten by them. His defeat at in Poland during the 18 years of his active military career. Maciejowice ushered in the third partition of Poland, bring- It shows his interactions with some of the most signifi- ing with it over 100 years of occupation, which occupa- cant figures of the American Revolution. It gives texture tion was ended by Piłsudski until renewed by Germany to our picture of KoÊciuszko as a loyal subordinate, an and Russia in 1939, after Piłsudski’s death. For those original military engineer, a great soul. Some of the plates living in Poland during the 50 year Soviet occupation, the in the book, such as that of KoÊciuszko in old age in Swit- “for your freedom and for ours” slogan rang hollow in- zerland chatting with children, give a meaning to deed. Poles knew full well that their allies had given them KoÊciuszko not readily perceived in earlier works. The up to slavery at Yalta. The most powerful of these allies, notice of KoÊciuszko’s keen satisfaction in the rallying of the Americans, were the ones KoÊciuszko had saved at Jewish citizens to the Polish standard during the rising of Saratoga. And so KoÊciuszko’s crypt stood apart, as be- 1794 is an example: “Nothing can convince more the far fitted a monument to a charmingly ineffective Don away nations about the holiness of our cause and the just- Quixote, who, in sum, had done Poland more harm than ness of the present revolution . . . though separated from good. us by their religion and customs, they sacrifice their own Now that Poland has regained its freedom, we should lives of their own free will in order to support the upris- go back and examine the record of KoÊciuszko more ing.” closely. Is it possible that KoÊciuszko’s republican vision Try as he might, the author of Liberty Thomas Fleming was correct after all? Might it even be the case that could not display much Jewish enthusiasm for the Ameri- KoÊciuszko had advanced a paradigm which had led to can Revolution. KoÊciuszko, during the Rising of 1794, the freedom won on June 4, 1989? welcomed a regiment of Jews who fought for Poland To start at the beginning of KoÊciuszko’s public career, against Russia under the leadership of Colonel Berek let us briefly comment on his contributions during the Joselewicz, who himself died in the struggle for Poland. defense against the invasion of Burgoyne in 1777. In Pula shows us a KoÊciuszko who is at once sympathetic their attacks on Fort Carillon (a.k.a. Fort Ticonderoga) and noble. But, alas, he gives us a vision of Kosciuszko during the Seven Years’ War, it had never occurred to the which is an updated but very familiar profile of that of a British to seize the high ground around the fort and fire wonderful impractical anachronism. Thus, Pula largely down into it with artillery. KoÊciuszko saw clearly that misses the essence of KoÊciuszko. the high ground northwest of the fort at Sugar Loaf moun- Two figures in all Polish history have been given the tain ought to be defended lest the British learn from their title of naczelnik narodu. Both of these, KoÊciuszko and mistakes of 20 years earlier. Even a screen of sharpshoot- Piłsudski, are buried in the crypts of the kings at Wawel ers could have deprived the British of the Sugar Loaf Castle. The title, naczelnik narodu, was supposed to be heights. KoÊciuszko’s recommendations were not fol- reminiscent of the legendary Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, lowed by the American commander St. Clair (who, as who left off ploughing to become dictator in defense of was the case with Gates, had been a British officer during the Roman Republic, and who, the enemy having been the disastrous Braddock campaign of that earlier war). defeated, resigned his authority and returned to plough- When, as a consequence, the fort fell, and St. Clair was ing. During the dark days of Soviet occupation, anyone court-martialed, KoÊciuszko, having written strong let- visiting the tombs would see Piłsudski’s crypt laden with ters of sympathy and support for his disgraced commander, January 2000 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 679 turned his attention to retarding the southern advance of really try to answer this question. To them, KoÊciuszko is Burgoyne. some sort of Enlightenment warrior-statesman, a new man The British fumed at his effectiveness. Streams were who sprang full grown from the provinces of the French dammed, turning the roads to marshes. Trees were felled Enlightenment without the sentimental baggage of an so that their branches interlocked in a fashion most diffi- earlier time. cult to remove. Despite the near panic in the American In his political writings KoÊciuszko is a complete re- army, KoÊciuszko’s use of shovel and axe so retarded the publican, unlike his American colleagues, who finally de- British that between present day Whitehall and Fort Ed- parted from the notion of hereditary monarchy only with ward progress was at the rate of one mile per day. And reluctance and trepidation. If one looks at a list of some every day Burgoyne’s supply lines became more precari- of his maxims, implicit and explicit, KoÊciuszko looks ous, while the American forces grew. Finally at Bemis much more like an American of 1877 than one of 1777. Heights, KoÊciuszko designed a cork in the bottle which Here is what one finds in his writings and statements on forced Burgoyne to abandon the River Road for a flank- political subjects: ing attack through the woods, where the British tactic of volley followed by bayonet charge was ineffective, and 1. Nations can be based on shared interests and territory the American ranger tactics were extremely effective. Thus and need not be based on uniformity of religion or lan- did the Americans gain their first major victory of the guage. Revolution, bringing the French into the conflict on the 2. The republic is the natural government for the West. American side. Saratoga was, in the minds of most histo- 3. The vote in a republic should be extended to a signifi- rians, the turning point of the war. cant fraction of the population. The American commander at Saratoga, Horatio Gates, 4. All voters are members of the militia and subject to when gushed over by his Boswell, Dr. Benjamin Rush, callup. answered, “Stop, Doctor, stop, let us be honest. In war, as 5. Serfdom and slavery are bad and must be phased out. in medicine, natural causes not under our control, do much. 6. Imperialism is a bad idea for republics. In the present case, the great tacticians of the campaign, 7. The function of the military of a republic is consequently were hills and forests, which a young Polish Engineer one of defense. The militia is a people’s army willing to was skillful enough to select for my encampment.” engage in partisan warfare. Most military leaders have a learning curve. Certainly 8. The advantages of the defender include fortification that was the case with George Washington himself. How- and placement of artillery. To make technology work for ever, when one looks at KoÊciuszko’s record during the the army, officers should receive engineering training in American Revolution and later, one is struck with the an institute devoted to military science. matter-of-fact way KoÊciuszko operated. Everything was 9. Republican armies can be slow to mobilize but once “by the book.” His defenses of West Point were brilliant mobilized should numerically overwhelm their enemies. with their use of natural terrain and interlocking fields of 10. Jacobinist tendencies should be resisted. We build on fire. But to KoÊciuszko, they seemed obvious. The con- what went before. We do not reinvent the world. struction of defense works was somehow second nature to him. Kosciuszko realized, long before Napoleon came The friendship of Jefferson and KoÊciuszko is remark- on the scene, that artillery could be used as the great equal- able. KoÊciuszko was one of Jefferson’s best friends and izer and killer of men. Twenty years before Barras cre- one of the few people with whom Jefferson liked to talk ated the Ecole Polytechnique in France, KoÊciuszko had political theory. Not well read in the Scottish or French proposed the creation of an American technical military Enlightenment literatures, KoÊciuszko was a republican school where all officers would be trained in engineering to the core of his being. He was the sort of person young and the sciences. His vision, the United States Military Jefferson was in the process of becoming. As ideological Academy at West Point, gave America the distinction of in his republicanism as the later creator of the Red Army, being the only country whose officer cadre is peopled by Leon Trotsky, was in his Marxism, KoÊciuszko regarded engineers (the Ecole Polytechnique produces scientists, republican government as the natural convergence point managers and politicians; the French still get their offic- for Western governments. In this regard, his republican ers from St. Cyr). faith surpassed even that of the young Jefferson. The obvious question to be addressed is, “If KoÊciuszko The key to both KoÊciuszko’s military science and his did everything by the book, then where did he get that political theory is his experience as a kresy szlachcic in a book?” Neither Pula nor earlier biographers of KoÊciuszko republic that was already over 200 years old at the time of 680 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2000 the American Revolution. From the adoption of the Con- Bar to Solidarity came from the Christian szlachcic (“in- stitution of the United States to the present time is a shorter telligentsia”) left, with the bishops, excepting Wyszyƒski time interval than the beginning of the Polish Republic to and Wojtyła, generally in opposition to the risings, and America’s adopting of its Constitution. When KoÊciuszko with the Branickis, Potockis, Krasiƒskis and other mag- spoke republican theory to Jefferson, his was the voice of nate families usually standing with the occupiers. The in- two hundred years of experience. fluence of KoÊciuszko in the republican movement in Ire- As regards building fortifications or funneling a foe into land is evidenced, in part, with a similar pattern of risings a killing field, KoÊciuszko’s people had been doing that and constituencies there. since the formation of the Polish-Lithuanian Union in People who believe in historical inevitability frequently 1403. One imagines that KoÊciuszko listened respect- try to help history along by their intervention. So it would fully to tales of his older American comrades concerning be with Lenin and Trotsky. So, in the American Revolu- the brutality of Huron and Mohawk massacres, keeping tion, it was with KoÊciuszko. He entered the American to himself the realization that the Americans were fortu- Revolution more or less assuming that he and his Polish nate that their Amerind foes had a significant technologi- comrades would die in the war. Of course, it was cal disadvantage vis-à-vis their Anglo-American foes, KoÊciuszko’s fate to survive both Burgoyne and Suvorov. whereas the Poles had had to deal with numerically much Was he naive in supposing some sort of reciprocity from larger formations of Cossacks, Tatars, and Turks, whose the Americans at a later time? We note that during Poland’s technology was comparable to that of the Poles and whose 1794 Uprising, KoÊciuszko sought no American interven- brutality was not less than that of the Amerinds. If West tion, believing it to be unrealistic at that time. Point was a key place for a fortification, so also had been But President Woodrow Wilson in 1918 surely helped Kudak, and Zbaraž, and Jasna Góra. Poles had been build- make good on KoÊciuszko’s dream. The American avia- ing and defending such fortifications for centuries. tors who founded the Polish Air Force in the form of the Burgoyne’s army at its height had under 10,000 troops. KoÊciuszko Squadron during the defense of Lwów (now At Beresteczko in 1651, the Poles under that greatest of Lviv) in 1919 had the very distinct notion of paying back Polish generals, Stefan Czarniecki, had fielded an army a debt to Poland. (Indeed, the great-great grandfather of of 100,000 against a joint Cossack–Tatar force of nearly the Squadron’s founder, M. C. Cooper, had carried the twice that number, exploiting enemy errors in command- dying Pułaski from the field of Savannah, and had passed communications-control by funneling the Cossacks into on the notion of payback to Poland to his descendants.) a marsh which became a killing field. Similarly, at Vienna So did President Ronald Wilson Reagan in the mid-1980s in 1683, Sobieski, perceiving failures in Turkish com- as he logistically hammered the Russian Empire to death, mand-communications-control, launched the last great bringing a free Poland again into the community of free cavalry charge in European warfare against a force twenty nations. The test of any theory, military or political, is the times his size, with the buzz-saw like sound of the hussars’ historical record. In that regard, the incredibly decent feathers driving away the last Islamic invasion of Europe. KoÊciuszko, who disdained to wage total war, who hanged In summary, KoÊciuszko came from a multiple genera- neither traitor king, bishop nor magnate, warned his coun- tional citizen-soldier tradition which had dealt with en- trymen that the free republic might well require genera- emy forces compared to which Burgoyne’s was rather tions to be restored. It did, and it was. History has vali- small beer. dated the vision of KoÊciuszko. Whereas the French Jacobins can lay claim to having When free men and women visit the Wawel crypts, they created the prototype for many of the revolutions of the might do well to leave a white rose and say an Ave for nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this claim does not KoÊciuszko, who gave his life in support of a model work for Poland. Nobody can imagine a Marat or a which really worked. KoÊciuszko was not only the no- Robespierre or a Bonaparte taking KoÊciuszko’s Kraków blest republican of them all. He was the wisest and, ulti- oath: “I, Thaddeus KoÊciuszko, swear in the sight of God mately, the most realistic. ∆ to the whole Polish nation that I will use the power en- trusted to me for the personal oppression of none, but will A History of the Poles in America to only use it for the defense of the integrity of the bound- aries, the regaining of the independence of the nation, and 1908 the solid establishment of universal freedom. So help me Part III: Poles in the Eastern and Southern States God and the Innocent Passion of His Son.” All the multiple Polish risings against occupiers, from By Wacław Kruszka. Edited with an introduction by January 2000 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 681 James S. Pula, with M. B. Biskupski, Stanley Cuba, recent monograph by historian Lawrence D. Orton;[3] and et al., translated by Krystyna Jankowski. [1901-1904; a brief review of Cleveland’s independent movement, led revised and enlarged edition, 1905-1908]. Washing- by Rev. Franciszek Kołaszewski (né Rademacher) (104- ton, D.C. The Catholic University of America Press. 6); a critical account of Rev. Franciszek Hodur and the 1998. viii + 394 pages. Hardcover. $54.95. rise of the Polish National Catholic Church in Nanticoke and Scranton, Pennsylvania (128-138); and a persuasively celebratory (and comparatively long) narrative of the pas- John J. Bukowczyk torate of Rev. Jan Pitass in Buffalo (the eastern analogue of Chicago’s Rev. Wincenty Barzyƒski, C. R.) which After a five-year pause in its publication schedule, schol- weathered an independentist challenge at the hands of Rev. ars welcome the appearance, in translation, of the third of Klawiter (197-210). While capturing crucial details, all four volumes of Rev. Wacław Kruszka’s Polish-Ameri- of these narratives are too narrow, sketchy, and brief to can classic. The first volume (1993) provided a concep- prompt a reexamination of these episodes. The subtext in tual and historical background for the project and reviewed this sea of detail, however, is that the Poles grew quarrel- the institutional history of the Polish immigrants (cover- some out of episcopal neglect or hostility, and the venal- ing such topics as the immigrant church, educational sys- ity or low morals of some particular laymen or priests tem, organizational life, and press). The second volume (some of whom were Resurrectionists who betrayed their (1994) looked at Poles in Illinois, with much of the work calling to minister to these immigrants). Indeed, Kruszka focusing on internecine strife in the contentious parishes once again uses these accounts as both a polemic against of Chicago. The final volume will examine the history of schism and, by implication, a call for the appointment of Polish parishes in the western states and, happily, also is a Polish bishop—or, as Kruszka elsewhere defined the to include an index to the four volumes. This long third entreaty, “polyglot bishops for polyglot dioceses”[4] and volume carries on Kruszka’s monumental project to “równouprawnienie” [equal rights for Poles in the Church chronicle the history of Polish-American Roman Catho- hierarchy]. lic parishes, this time treating Polish enclaves in Michi- The volume, which at times reads like a travelogue, gan, Indiana, Ohio, the Middle Atlantic states (in separate also includes some arresting details and stories, such as chapters), Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, the time when, it was claimed, a picture of the Virgin Mary but also taking note of the small Polish presence in the served miraculously to spare one Pole’s home from a fire balance of New England, eastern Canada, the Southern that consumed the forests of the Michigan Thumb region states, Texas, Arkansas, and Cuba. in September 1881 (17), or when Resurrectionist Rev. The book usefully offers a capsule description of each Adolf Bakanowski took to carrying, besides his rosary, of the states it covers and a brief history of Polish settle- also a revolver as protection against anti-Polish Texas ruf- ment within them. As in the two volumes that preceded fians (297). Among the accounts which pique special it[1], the material presented in volume three also connects interest are the early days of the Polish colony at Panna with core themes that animated turn-of-the-century Pol- Maria, Texas, and the coming of the Resurrectionist or- ish America: immigrant nationalism, lay trusteeism, der to America (285-324); the rise of Lithuanian nation- independentism and schism, Church politics, cultural plu- alism (114-6); the uniqueness of the (hodge-podge) so- ralism, and assimilation. Though itself rather miscella- cial and political composition of New York Polonia (181); neous and antiquarian, Rev. Kruszka’s state-by-state cov- the very early Polish presence in Buffalo, New York (196- erage impresses with its thoroughness, detail, and shear 7); and the assassination of President William McKinley extent that amply demonstrates its author’s skills as a by Leon Czolgosz, a Polish anarchist (209-10). Alas, the scholar and the “Nestor of Polish historians in America,” volume contains too few of either the charming or the as Monsignor Alexander Syski, another scholar-priest, pithy to hold the attention of the recreational reader. The called him.[2] contemporary reader also may feel disappointment at the In ranging over the development of Polish parishes in only perfunctory mention of the Polish female religious the East, Kruszka’s research apprehended many of the congregations and their work. episodes and vignettes that have become Polish-Ameri- Scholars and the serious student nonetheless will ap- can historical mainstays. Kruszka makes the case for preciate this volume as an important building-block in Parisville, Michigan, as the home of the oldest Polish par- the edifice of Polish immigration history. Specialists and ish in the United States (6-7). Likewise, he presents a cap- nonspecialists alike meanwhile might hope that this trans- sule history of the stormy, schismatic pastorate of Detroit’s lation project, ably directed by Dr. James S. Pula (now Rev. Dominik Kolasiƒski (26-38), the subject of a more 682 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2000 dean at Utica College of Syracuse University), will intro- wish the evening news would do: infuse the ordinary with duce the story of the immigrant faithful into the master importance. She describes without judging or analyzing narrative of Roman Catholic Church history in America, and does it with a skill, which makes the ordinary town, from which it has been largely absent to-date. ∆ with its ordinary people, come alive via the perception of the ordinary protagonist who speaks in first person singu- NOTES lar. 1. See my review of A History of the Poles in America, Part I, The three novels of Suzanne Strempek Shea have some in The Sarmatian Review, 15:1(January 1995), 298–9; and of common denominators. All involve the journey of a young A History of the Poles in America, Part II, in The Sarmatian woman who lacks direction and/or is thrown off balance Review, 15:1 (April 1996), 396–7. by an unexpected event. In Hoopi Shoopi Donna, a new- 2. Rt. Rev. Monsignor Alexander Syski, S. T. M., “The Nestor comer to the family and subsequent alienation from her of Polish Historians in America: Reverend Wacław Kruszka,” Polish-American Studies, 1(1944), 62-70. father fractures Donna Milewski’s life. This second novel 3. Lawrence D. Orton, Polish Detroit and the Kolasiƒski Affair is suffused with American Polishness and linkage to the (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981). old country. 4. Kruszka’s article, by that title, appeared in the Freeman’s In the first of the three novels, Selling the Lite of Heaven, Journal (1901). the protagonist is so anchored in her family and commu- nity that we do not even learn her name. Instead we learn the name of Edna, her mother, who raised her daughter Lily of the Valley only to be good. Goodness does not cushion the daughter against adversity, nor does it teach her to take charge of By Suzanne Strempek Shea. New York. Pocket Books. her life. Her story concludes when she finds direction. 1999. 273 pages. Hardback. $22.00. Compared to Hoopi Shoopi Donna, this story’s Polishness is muted. Bogna Lorence-Kot Lily Wilk’s immediate family is peripheral to her story, which develops when Lily is commissioned to paint the portrait of another woman’s family. Family pervades the Lily’s story begins at the age of ten when she discovers three novels. The first two provoke the conclusion that drawing. It concludes when she is forty, and when she the lack of worldliness exhibited by the young women defines herself as an artist. Between discovery and cul- protagonists is the result of excessive cocooning within mination she lives and works shapelessly by taking odd the family. Donna is so enamored of her family, particu- jobs which utilize her talent, until a commission is handed larly her father, that his mistaken disapproval locks her her to paint a family portrait. That responsibility sets her into a reactively punitive mode. Her energy and potential off in a forward direction, and her life takes shape. for further development go on hold. The nameless daugh- Toward the end of her story she muses: ter in Selling the Lite of Heaven, has been rendered pas- My life itself has been a box. One thing to sive because her mother set no goals for her, except to be most people who saw it, something else to good. me, who got the best look inside, who got Donna Milewski and Edna’s daughter are so depen- to shake it, to open it, to guess that all the dent on their families that they have no reason, desire, or many pieces inside might come together to will toward autonomy. Lily Wilk demonstrates a similar make something way beyond any personality without taking the reader through the details imaginings. of its formation and the way it plays out within the fam- ily. Such powerful family cohesion, which a negative Lily of the Valley, Suzanne Strempek Shea’s third novel reading might label stifling, presents a provocative con- is set, like her first two, in a small Polish-American town trast to the family dynamics in American Beauty, where in Massachusetts. The town, the inhabitants, and the hero- parental self-absorption and unconcern with goodness has ine are ordinary, so ordinary that they would surely in- emancipated the daughter to full awareness that she must voke horror and rejection by the nubile beauty featured in depend only on herself, and must find her own direction. the current hit film, American Beauty. If the ordinary is The family in the movie consists of three persons preoc- not attractive, how is it that this author has produced a cupied with themselves. compelling story? How do we account for these disparate family dynam- She makes the ordinary matter. She does what we all ics in the same culture? Are the novels of Suzanne January 2000 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 683 Strempek Shea representative of the history of Poles in the Armia Krajowa (Home Army), a sociologist educated America? Is the Polish commitment to family and com- in Poland and teaching at SUNY, Buffalo, since 1970, munity at odds with the American mainstream? It would and a senior associate fellow of St. Anthony’s College, appear so at this point in time. Strempek Shea’s people Oxford. He has many publications to his credit, the most show no interest in (upward) mobility, they appear not to recent ones focusing on the phenomenon of the intelli- even know that there is a fast track. Does this posture gentsia in first world countries. He is the recipient of sev- account for Polish American lack of visibility and politi- eral awards for his work.[1] In the book under review, he cal clout in this country? Are we so wedged in the family, writes about the anticommunist underground leaders, their so grounded in the community, and so unwilling to be aims and fate in the immediate post-World War II period. autonomous as to disqualify for a position in the main- His declared aim is to make sure the last heroes of the stream cultural model? And is this the result of Polish Second Polish Republic will live with honor in the memory history brought over in our cultural genes? their countrymen. The book is useful because it contains There is an opinion that in the nineteenth century, Poles many documents that the average interested Polish reader began overprotecting their children, that they cocooned may find hard to find, but this is counterbalanced by the them into an educative formula which consisted of Catho- author’s intemperate statements and judgments, and by lic nationalism and preoccupation with the past. If that is his misinterpretations of history both within and outside so and if it can be said that Polish Americans continue his chosen period. this practice, then it should come as no surprise that Pol- Gella is right in claiming that the destruction of the ish Americans are out of step with the mainstream cul- Polish Underground State still awaits a comprehensive ture. After all, American parents feel obliged to promote study [2], though he acknowledges throughout the book the autonomy of their children, to segregate the genera- some works and collections of documents published in tions, and promote individual freedom instead of kinship. the last few years. However, these publications do not Families uproot themselves and spread out geographically diminish his anger against Polish postcommunist govern- (dwindling parts of the American South are close to the ments. His grievances against them are stated right at the Polish formula) in pursuit of economic opportunities. outset. He faults them for not acknowledging the fact that Retirees, without the excuse of economic incentive, move the Second Republic did not end with the catastrophe of to the “sun belt” or just move for the sake of moving. 1939. He blames the participants in the Roundtable talks Family interdependence is not promoted but rejected in between Solidarity and the communist government (Feb- the name of psychic health as represented by autonomy ruary–April 1989) for ignoring this historical truth. In his and individual freedom. According to these criteria, Lily view, this negligence put the talks on the same level as of the Valley does show signs of the slackening of the that represented by the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) es- Polish formula because the reader learns much less about tablished by the Soviets, Polish United Workers’ Party the nature of Lily’s relationship with her parents, because (PZPR), and Stalin. He then makes a suggestion that this her parents plan to move to Florida (though her mother omission was partly due to the desire, on the communist assures her that she has her own room in the new house), side in the talks, to exclude Polish emigrants and their and because Lily appears less imbedded in her family. children from playing too important a role in the Third Can it be that Suzanne Strempek Shea is working herself Republic. In his view, the Roundtable winners should out of the Polish American formula? ∆ have honored some living representatives of the armed forces in the West, or the Home Army, or leaders of the Underground State, with at least symbolic posts in the Zagłada Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej, new government. [3] At the end of the book, he claims 1945-1947 that the government ignored the Congress of Polish Com- batants held in Warsaw in 1992, while the combatants felt as if they were in a foreign city.[4] He also condemns the By Aleksander Jan Gella. Warsaw. Agencja present Polish political elite, whom he sees not as mem- Wydawnicza CB. 1998. 236 pages. Illustrations, in- bers of the traditional Polish intelligentsia, which included dex. the officer corps of the Home Army and the Polish armed forces in the West, but as the descendants of power hun- Anna M. Cienciala gry “Commandos” who later entered the structures of Solidarity. He condemns all these new leaders, also former Aleksander Gella, b. Lwów 1922, is a former soldier of “nomenclature cynics,” for their embrace of “bandit capi- 684 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2000 talism,” for the lack of de-communization, the chaos in secure a British guarantee of aid for Poland against any social services, especially hospitals, and disregard for eco- other country than Germany, because the British Cabinet logical rights. He also attacks the present Polish assump- deliberately excluded the USSR from the guarantee, keep- tion that Poland is more secure than ever before in its ing open the possibility of an Anglo-Soviet alliance against history. To counter this view, he cites a memorandum titled Hitler. Negotiations for such an alliance, including France, “German Hegemony in Europe,” allegedly submitted by took place between early May and late August 1939, but a body called “The Council of Free Germany” to the Stalin chose to align with Nazi Germany. Therefore, Beck United States government in November 1990, as proof of cannot be blamed for not securing a guarantee against the German aim to retake Polish Pomerania (Pomorze) both German and Soviet aggression. [8] Finally, as far as and Silesia. He does not explain how he secured this France is concerned, General Gamelin’s decision not to memorandum, nor what the U.S. government reaction launch an offensive against Germany in order to help was, if any. Finally, he claims that without rebuilding the Poland—as France was obligated to do by the military “state ethos” of the Second Republic, Poland’s chances agreements of May 1939—was not motivated by the de- of survival among the free nations are negligible, while sire to save French strength when it was clear that Poland the chances of her dissolution in a multilingual “Europe could not withstand the German onslaught. In fact, the without fatherlands” are increasing all the time.[5] French High Command never intended to launch such an To say that Gella’s ideological views are strange is an offensive. As Gamelin admitted at the first meeting of the understatement. He also interprets history to suit his pur- Supreme Allied War Council on September 12, he would pose. He writes that “neither Polish propaganda, nor any not change his strategy even if the Poles held out for two Western source of information, nor any individual histo- or three months because he saw their role as winning time rian of World War II emphasizes the fact that without the for the allies to prepare for the German attack in the Polish armed effort, the fate of Europe would have been West.[9] total catastrophe.”[6] It is true that Poland’s isolated battle Gella favors a conspiratorial theory of history in attrib- with Germany in September 1939 won time for her west- uting President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policy toward Po- ern allies, France and Britain, of which only the latter land to the “communist penetration of America,” espe- made good use by producing 600 fighter planes per month. cially by the Communist Party of the USA. He includes But it is impossible to prove that if Poland had agreed to Secretary of State Cordell Hull (not ambassador as the Hitler’s demands, he would have succeeded in invading author describes him), among American “liberal leftists Britain in the fall of 1939, assuming of course the col- and crypto-communists,” and cites a map of the postwar lapse of France in the same space of five weeks as in world with explanatory text, as published in Philadelphia 1940. Another possibility would have been a Franco- in 1942. It shows most of the globe in red. [10] He sees British, or at least British peace with Hitler by recogniz- the United States and the Soviet Union as dividing the ing his conquests, a peace that some members of the Brit- world in a “Vodka-Cola” deal. [11] In fact, Roosevelt’s ish Cabinet, particularly Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, policy of writing off Eastern Europe was most likely favored after the fall of France. Such a peace in either motivated not by communist influence—although there 1939 or 1940 might have led Hitler to attack the USSR. were American spies in high places reporting to the In sum, Poland’s contribution to allied victory deserves USSR—but by his perception that this was needed to keep much more recognition than is the case so far, but to claim the Soviets in the war and to secure their later help against that Poland saved Europe from catastrophe borders on Japan. He was also confident of moderating Soviet policy megalomania. in Eastern Europe through his powers of persuasion with Gella continues to distort history by saying that En- Stalin and by having the USSR as a member of the United gland owed her salvation above all to the fact that she Nations, though he began to have doubts shortly before succeeded in “persuading” Poland to (a) reject Hitler’s his death. [12] As for Truman, at first he tried to continue offers of cooperation; (b) reject his territorial demands, Roosevelt’s policy of friendship with Moscow, but and (c) accept British guarantees. [7] In reality, no Polish switched in March 1947 to a policy of containing the government could have accepted cooperation with Hitler USSR known as the “Truman Doctrine,” which heralded along with his territorial demands without being over- the beginning of the Cold War. thrown. Also, both Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck had As far as repression in Poland is concerned, Gella cites been trying for years to secure British support for Poland, Stefan Pełczyƒski’s figures that 200,000 people were so Beck did not hesitate to accept the British offer to guar- murdered by the NKVD and Red Army in 1944–45, and antee Polish independence. Furthermore, Beck could not that some 400,000 were in prison in 1952.[13] The first January 2000 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 685 figures may never be verified, but recently opened ar- U. B. (Security Office) and appealed for all resisters to chives of the Ministry of Public Security (Ministerstwo reveal themselves and accept amnesty. [17] The fact is Bezpieczeƒstwa Publicznego, or MBP) show the prison that most Poles were exhausted and pinned their hopes to numbers were lower. Thus, on January 1, 1948, there were the free elections promised in the Yalta agreements, ex- 26,400 political prisoners, and in mid-1950, they num- pecting the victory of Stanisław Mikołajczyk’s Peasant bered 32,200. [14] Party, the largest political party in Poland after World War Gella’s book, ostensibly dealing with the liquidation of II. But the communists rigged the elections and the Polish Underground State, includes a chapter on the Mikołajczyk fled the country, after which terror increased British government’s dissolution of the Polish armed and lasted until 1955. forces after the war. Chapter 6 is titled: “Pozbycie si∏ Gella claims that the traditional role of the Polish intel- Polskich Sił Zbrojnych przez Brytyjski Rzàd Jego ligentsia as leaders of society ended with the last resis- Królewskiej MoÊci” (How His Majesty’s British Govern- tance heroes of the Second Republic in 1947. He does ment Got Rid of the Polish Armed Forces). The author not recognize the role of the Polish intelligentsia in the views the setting up of the “Polish Resettlement Corps” ranks of the Committee for the Defense of Workers (KOR) as another act of gross betrayal by Poland’s ally Britain. in 1976–81, in underground Solidarity and in the under- However, it is difficult to see what else the British gov- ground “civic society” in the years 1982–89. ernment could have done with the Polish soldiers who Finally, one may ask whether the “state ethos” of the did not wish to return to Poland—which they were not Second Republic can be recreated in today’s Poland? This forced to do. As it was, the soldiers who did not choose to seems rather unlikely, unless Polish independence is threat- emigrate elsewhere were housed, fed and trained for new ened again. Indeed, this type of self-sacrificing patrio- jobs at British expense. Gella condemns general tism can be expected of only a minority in any given soci- Władysław Anders and other Polish generals for not op- ety, and only in situations of extreme danger and duress posing the PRC. He believes they should have kept the which is not the situation in Poland today. In conclusion, armed forces in one place and ordered them to mutiny, the heroic resisters of 1945–47 should certainly be given claiming this would have forced the British government their rightful place in Polish memory, but they deserve a to intern them, which in turn, would have been a means more balanced advocacy than they receive in this book.∆ of Polish émigré pressure on the policies of the allies in the years 1945–47. He also thinks the mutiny could have NOTES been used by the British government as leverage to se- 1. See Gella’s biography in Who’s Who in Polish America, cure free elections in Poland.[15] Leaving aside the fact lst ed. (New York, 1996), 123–124. that most of the Polish soldiers in the PRC accepted their 2. Gella, 14. fate and thus were unlikely to mutiny, the author’s specu- 3. Ibid., 11. lation about British policy is not supported by any evi- 4. Ibid., 211. dence whatever. There is an earlier study of the PRC, based 5. Ibid., 213–220. on Foreign Office documents, which presents a more bal- 6. Ibid., p. 17, par. 3. 7. Ibid. anced picture of British policy and the problems it faced 8. Ibid., 32. On British and French policy toward Poland in in dealing with Polish war veterans.[16] 1939, see Anna M. Cienciala, “Poland in British and French The “state ethos” or patriotism of the Poles in the Sec- Policy in 1939: Determination to Fight or Avoid War?” Polish ond Republic was certainly admirable, and was expressed Review, 34:3 (1989), 199–226; or Cienciala, “Polska w polityce in the determination of the last resisters, most of whom Wielkiej Brytanii w przededniu wybuchu II wojny Êwiatowej,” were arrested and imprisoned by the Soviet-imposed post- Kwartalnik Historyczny, 47:1-2 (1990), 79–102. World War II Polish government. Some were condemned 9. Gella on Gamelin, p. 13; for Gamelin’s statement of Sep- to death in rigged trials and executed. Some of the lead- tember 12, 1939, see Cienciala’s articles above. ers of one of the last underground organizations, WIN 10. Gella, p. 23, 26, 27, and annex 1 for the map and text. (WolnoÊç i NiezawisłoÊç, or Freedom and Independence), 11. Gella, p. 47: the name is taken from a book by Ch. Levinson, ibid., note 19; see also p. 63. gathered documentary evidence on alleged Soviet plans 12. A good general account and analysis of Roosevelt’s for- to conquer the world and passed it on to the West, but it is eign policy can be found in Robert Dallek, Franklin D. doubtful that these reports had any impact on Western Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New leaders. In any case, when arrested (possibly under tor- York: Oxford, 1979). See also Anna M. Cienciala, “Great Brit- ture), such WiN leaders as Col. Jan Rzepecki and Col. ain and Poland Before and After Yalta (1943–1945): A Reas- Jan Mazurkiewicz gave information about others to the sessment,” Polish Review, 40:3 (1995), 281-31; and William 686 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2000 Larsh, “Yalta and the American Approach to Free Elections in special product arrivals. Dzi∏giel similarly describes the Poland,” ibid., 267-280. unexpected intricacies and complications of dealing with 13. Gella, p. 105 and note 11 ibid. chronic shortages of paper, plastic, sugar and salt; locat- 14. Figures cited by Andrzej Paczkowski, Pół wieku dziejów ing a flat; and buying a car. Polski 1939–1989 (Warsaw, 1995), 259. This work, written as The primary method organizing Dziegiel’s recollec- a textbook, does not have notes, but the author was one of the first to read MBP archival documents. tions and descriptions is autobiography. Most of the book 15. Gella, 205–6. is devoted to the making of the academic intellectual in 16. See Keith Sword with Norman Davies and Jan postwar Poland. Obviously, everyday life for the intel- Ciechanowski, The Formation of the Polish Community in lectual in Poland was not the same as, say, that of the vast Great Britain, 1939–50 (London, 1989), 245–55. working class or peasantry. Yet, the status of intellectual 17. For a listing of various opposition groups, including WiN, in no way automatically relieved one of the constant drudg- and their fate, see Paczkowski, Pół Wieku, 177–81. ery of everyday life under the totalitarian yoke of com- munism. Dzi∏giel’s scholarly career began in secondary school Paradise in a Concrete Cage in Katowice, where he was forced to take an exit exam supervised by party officials. In attempting to enter the By Leszek Dzi∏giel. Kraków. Arcana. 1998. 307 Jagiellonian University, Dzi∏giel had to compete with young people from the peasantry who were given prefer- pages. Paper. ential admissions treatment because of their “correct so- cial background.” Scholarships were tiny, and housing Joseph A. Kotarba was difficult to locate. Nevertheless, university students devised strategies for Leszek Dzi∏giel’s Paradise in a Concrete Cage is a rich escaping the drudgery of communism, if only for fleeting and fascinating, first-person account of everyday life in moments. American and British films, hiking in the Tatras, post World War 2 Cracow. Dziegiel is a professor of eth- clothing and hair styles that were symbols of political resis- nology at the Jagiellonian University, who earlier in his tance, private parties, French jazz—university students in the career applied his skills to the study of third-world societ- 1950s and 1960s found ways to enjoy life and establish a ies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Paradise is an effort sense of individualism in the midst of drab collectivism. to write about his own society from the ethnologist per- Any ethnography as detailed as Paradise is bound to spective. This exceptionally detailed story meets the first have numerous pluses and minuses. A distinctive plus is and most important criterion for good ethnography (as Dzi∏giel’s elegant analysis of the redesign and rebuilding this scholarly enterprise is more generally referred to in of Poland’s devastated cities after the war in light of mas- the West): the author makes you feel like you were there. sive population relocation. A distinctive minus is his over- Dzi∏giel’s postwar Poland sounds both alien and fas- drawn obsession with automobiles and motorcycles. cinating to the American reader. He writes about numer- In addition to its wealth of substantive information, ous common problems and practices in the everyday life Dzi∏giel’s book illustrates the contrast between ethno- of Polish people that are only hinted at in stories we hear graphic and ethnological studies of everyday life. In a from friends or relatives emigrating from Poland, or that nutshell, American and sociologically-inspired ethnog- are suggested by the mass media. For example, we all raphy was designed to study everyday American urban have heard about the long queues in which Poles have life, whereas European and anthropologically-inspired eth- had to stand in order to get scarce food and other goods. nology was designed to study “primitive” peoples. Eth- Dzi∏giel describes the actual social structure of these nologists attempting to apply their craft to urban life in queues. During times of unusually great shortage, queues the new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe can would split into two columns: one made up of “privileged” benefit from exposure to the sophisticated methodologies shoppers, such as the disabled or old-age pensioners, who developed over time in American ethnography, for ex- “leaning on their canes and crutches. . . stood tight-lipped, ample, the explicit and desirable use of the researcher’s clutching the documents that allowed them to jump the personal experience as a valid source of data. American queue” (34). They would exchange insults with mem- ethnographers can benefit from reading Paradise in a bers of the regular queue. The rules of the queue were Concrete Cage and seeing how the human spirit can con- constantly violated, either by the hired queuers, who would struct a warm and supportive everyday life reality within wait in line for wealthier patrons, or by shop workers who, the soulless context of totalitarianism. ∆ for a bribe, would furtively disclose the day and time of January 2000 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 687 Fronda: A Monthly New World Order will not come about by means of “ag- ing gentlemen meeting in seminars.” He advises the fol- lowing: “You must take a knife, put on a mask, go out of Danuta Z. Hutchins the house in the evening and kill at least one Yank.” He adds, “I do not know whether any of the New Right activ- The Polish word “fronda” (from the French “fronde” sig- ists have ever been under artillery siege, but our people nifying “sling”) refers to the struggle of the French middle do not only go to meetings or fight at the barricades, they classes against the court party led by Cardinal Mazarin also go to real wars, for instance to the Dniestr district (1648-53). The Polish monthly Fronda represents an ar- [Moldova], or to Yugoslavia. . . . The New Right is only a gumentative departure from traditional journalism of a project, and we are its architects. The future is truly ours.” group of young Polish writers, philosophers, poets, art- (Fronda 11/12, 146) Earlier, Dugin admitted that his ide- ists and literati. By the editors’ own admission, this jour- ology would succeed in the Polish case only if Polish nal takes Catholicism seriously and tries to strengthen it Catholicism were corrupted “from within” by “reorient- through a bold choice of topics, authors, and arguments. ing it in a more heterodox, more New-Age-y direction.” Several persons listed in Fronda’s editorial board regu- Such confessions and equally explosive opinions in other larly contribute to other Polish journals and publications, articles make for fascinating reading. Would that our “Rus- including Catholic ones such as Znak, Przeglàd sia experts” paid some attention to the actual statements Powszechny, or Horyzonty Wiary, and political ones such of the people who play first fiddle in the Russian military. as Rzeczpospolita and Odra. The editors’ stance is revealed through graphics and Published and edited in Warsaw, Fronda’s issues are illustrations accompanying the interview. In Dugin’s case, over 350 pages long. The eight extant issues are now out- the drawings include a swastika in the scepter and an up- of-print but are available on the Web side-down Eucharistic chalice on the head of a cruelly (www.webfabrika.com.pl/fronda). The format com- unconcerned figure of Ivan the Terrible. The figure evolves bines essay, interview, scholarly articles, excerpts from as the interview continues. A pure, clearly symbolic paint- Catholic giants such as G. K. Chesterton, and various ad- ing of “The Guardian of the Well” by Michał Swider denda. The quality of articles is uneven, as the journal amplifies Dugin’s revelations. The narrow entrance to a draws from diverse sources. The visual appearance is well from which springs the fountain of knowledge is pleasing: pen and ink drawings, photographs, and color guarded by a mysterious, gaunt and solemn creature. It is reproductions of most exquisite and religiously-inspired Ermelino, or an ermine, the symbol of royal power. paintings and frescoes by Michal Swider [11/12 (1998) Clearly, the editors recognize the rationale for the exist- issue]. ence of the papacy. Sarcasm and mimicry are among Fronda’s tactics. The Barbara Tichy writes about Swider’s symbolics in an enigmatic superscript claims the journal is “consecrated” interview titled “A Meeting at the Well” (11/12, 273). to the “fronda.” In the 11/12 issue, the subscript “Year Then, she and her husband Rafał conduct a discussion 1998 since Christ’s birth” is followed by “Year 7506 since with Swider about modern art (11/12, 274-286). Swider the beginning of the world.” speaks about his own encounter with the sacrum. He draws Addressing a Polish-Russian interest, editor Grzegorz inspiration from Cennini’s treatise on art titled “About Górny extracts a worrisome and unguarded admission Painting” and written in Italy in the early fifteenth cen- from Alexander Dugin in an interview entitled “I Am tury. Judging by the reproductions of his artworks in Waiting for Ivan the Terrible” [Fronda 11/12 (1998), 130- Fronda, he brilliantly uses the fresco technique in his styl- 146]. Dugin is the leader of the National Bolshevik Party ized portraits of angels, saints, the Virgin Mary and God’s in Russia; he is also in charge of Strategic Planning at Chosen People. He says that an artist who approaches the Russia’s General Staff Military Academy. He is the au- sacrum must make a “conscious and determined choice thor of a strongly anti-Western pamphlet, “The Founda- between light and darkness.” He argues that for a work of tions of Geopolitics” (1997) taught at all Russian military art to be good it “must not only be formally good, but also academies. In Górny’s interview conducted in Moscow morally good. . . . Spiritual reality can be accessed only in 1998, Dugin opines that Europe must choose between through symbols. . . Now these are forgotten things, [and aligning itself either with Russia or with America. “If the we have] unfortunately trivialized the greatest symbol: European New Right chooses us [Russians], that means the cross, [which] is no longer the same when it happens it chooses the barbarian element, and therefore it must to be placed as an earring in someone’s ear.” (282) choose our methods of action,” he says. He notes that the Swider’s observations articulate our anger over frivo- 688 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2000 lous tampering with the sacrum demonstrated in recent throughout all my life.” Miłosz obviously was unaware times by the various unfortunate examples of “art” which of Fronda’s criticism in the same issue of his famous poem, mixes the sacred and the profane. Rather than doing so, “The Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto.” This poem is artists should strive to “reinvoke the symbol so it begins scathingly discussed in Adam Stern’s “Millenio to exist anew in [our] reality. . . . Art . . . is the fissure Adveniente: so-called ‘clerical fiction’” (11/12 p. 9). between the two broken pieces. Beyond and before it It appears that Fronda is willing to take on any topic, stands some kind of reality. Before it there is our daily person, or ideology. It is a politically incorrect magazine reality, beyond it, spiritual reality which we are also ca- par excellence. While its articles cross the boundaries of pable of experiencing.” good taste on occasion, their refreshing openness to ideas In issue 4/5 (1995), the editors concentrate on unearth- contrasts sharply with the predictable topics and arguments ing the truth about political events in Chile. The inter- of the major cultural and political magazines in the United views and commentaries reveal the thoughts and feelings States and in Poland, on the left and on the right. Fronda of Chile’s key political figures, be it the peculiar religios- is iconoclastic and editorially opinionated, but it is also ity of Admiral Jose Teribio Merino, member of the Chil- compelling. ∆ ean junta (“This Day was Appointed by the Mother of God,” pp. 23–5), or the remarks of General Augusto Poem Pinochet’s second-in-command, General Julio Canessy Wiesław Janusz Mikulski Robert (“I Am a Crustacean and I Feel Pain with Each you paint time One’s Death,” pp. 26–27). with the colors of clouds In the same issue, Jerzy Ziołkowski dissects the “Homo the sun Americanus” (46–52). An opportunity was given by the sails like a skiff 1993 U. S. Department of Education report concerning in the sky literacy. Ziołkowski observes that according to the re- port, 45 million Americans are functional illiterates, but i push the chilly grate of the wind half of them possess valid high school diplomas. He com- the keyboard of fallen leaves ments: “They know how to read in the technical sense of burns with music the word, that is they can decipher the words, but they lack the necessary abilities to utilize this information.” i carry in the basket of memory Other articles are often bitingly sarcastic, although in the fruit years of contentment some of them the sarcasm is impenetrable to those unfa- bunches of grapes miliar with Central European history. In “An Open Letter to the Swedish Academy” (No. 11/12, 174–5), Piotr Giedrowicz asks the Nobel Prize granting body to award a prize for literature to Jerzy Urban, a former press spokes- Iridion man for the communist Polish government and one of the most despicable figures of the communist period. Urban belongs to the “oral rather than written literary tradition,” Zygmunt Krasiƒski as does the recent Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, “argues” Giedrowicz; like Fo, Urban organized some of the “most Translated from the Polish by Florence Noyes, ed- blasphemous happenings in the history of television.” ited by George Rapall Noyes. Oxford and London. Fronda even wrangles out a revealing confession from Oxford University Press. 1927. 282 pages. Hardcover. Czesław Miłosz. Its 1998 Questionnaire on Religion and Excerpts published by permission of Oxford Univer- Literature (202–231) lays bare Miłosz’s evasive and su- sity Press. perficial posture towards his own religious practice. Re- sponding to a seemingly simplistic question “What is your George Noyes, “Introduction” attitude to prayer, liturgy, confession?” Milosz says: “I suspect that many people, instead of contemplative prayer, The hero of the drama, Iridion, is a Greek of the third achieve their internal contemplation as if side by side with century after Christ. His father, Amphilochus, seeing their muscle or brain activities, plowing, steering a car, Hellas trampled upon and degraded by the Romans, forms painting, writing, when the activity itself is the one which a far-reaching plan of revenge. Feeling his own lack of requires attention. This is what writing has been for me strength . . . he marries Grimhilda, priestess of Odin. Their January 2000 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 689 son, he trusts, will unite Greek intellect with the fresh is poetic truth, he is not philosophic truth. The mighty strength of the German races. Into this son, Iridion, advances of the human race come not through vengeance, Amphilochus instils the purpose of wreaking vengeance but through love, through the long toil of the spirit. The upon Rome. . . . Iridion’s plan is [to] reduce Rome to body must writhe, thirst for blood, wield the sword and ashes and wreck Roman power, trusting that a free Greece the spear, for short are its days; the Spirit may think, may rise from the chaos. In his plan he is supported by pray, and love, for it has ages before it. The body, when it the old Numidian, Masinissa, who is really Satan, the spirit once falls, will never rise again; the Spirit is poured forth of evil. . . . For success, however, Iridion needs the aid of from hearts that have broken into hearts that still beat, the oppressed Christians, who dwell in the Catacombs. . . and in them it finisheds the journey that it has undertaken. But the Christians are true to their religion of love and So in the pagan half of my poem, in the sensuous, youth- non-resistance; guided by their bishop, Victor, they desert ful, heroic, poetic half, the body seethes; vengeance seethes Iridion at the crisis. as the sole thought; iron, fire, and destruction follow it. . . . . But fire burns out, iron snaps, destruction knows not what Iridion fails, but Masinissa consoles him. If Iridion will to do in its own chaos; the laugh of Satan echoes over the sell his soul to him, he promises that he will lull him to scene. All is dark and bitter. The noblest aims perish un- sleep for ages, and will then arouse him to see Rome realized; fire and iron are too weak to carry them to a crushed and ruined. Iridion accepts the terms, and is awak- conclusion. ened by Masinissa in 1835 [the year Iridion was written]. In the second part, the Christian, philosophical Con- Masinissa claims his soul, but . . . Iridion is saved, condi- clusion, salvation follows. . . a moral lesson also follows, tionally, by the prayers of the angel Cornelia and by his an admonition that one must labor with the spirit, in or- own love of Greece. The voice of Christ bids him depart der to be raised again from the toil of ages. What is that to the North, to the ‘land of graves and crosses’, that is, to toil of ages? It is the toil of the Spirit, holy, grievous, and Poland. There he must work in the spirit of love, not ha- long, but the only genuine toil. . . tred, seeking not glory for himself, but only the good of Masinissa is . . . . the Satan of all ages and societies, those new brethren entrusted to him. ∆ eternally struggling, eternally defeated, dissolving into mist, yet having his hellish, criminal, malicious moments. Zygmunt Krasiƒski, About Iridion . . . In ancient times, the true Satan, who inexorably im- pels men to evil and causes them to commit crimes, is not There are men who have lived but whose labors upon Pluto, but Fate, ruling over all things—the general rule, earth have been largely in vain; whose brains seethed reason, the iron, icy will, the irresistible anathema brood- with naught but wild dreams, but whose hearts suffered ing over the universe. . . Over Fate towers the Divine and yearned and sacrificed all things and at the last could Providence, which at times breaks and crushes it. ∆ only break in the iron hands of necessity, having won naught from fate by their prayers, having accomplished Zygmunt Krasiƒski, Iridion [1835] (excerpts) nothing for their brothers. They have descended to the grave covered with shame and disgrace; many men have IRIDION. Answer me in this last hour, Masinissa, thou cursed them; they have been holy through feeling, mighty who hast led me astray, thou who hast promised me so in valor; their error has been merely that they failed to much, thou on whose bosom my head has rested in sleep judge well their strength, their resources, the time itself, when I was a child, thou who standest above me at this in a word the whole mechanism and mathematics of life. moment as though thou wert the ruler of the world. Tell Such men belong to poetry, body and soul. Politics will me quickly, is Christ the lord of heaven and earth? say little or nothing of them; history more; poetry most, MASINISSA. As an immortal enemy to an immortal en- perhaps the whole truth. And through all the ages there emy! Today He rules over the ancient heaven and over have been such heroes of misfortune, crowned with no the decrepit earth, but there are immensities where His victory, inglorious, resting at last in nameless graves, who name has been blotted out, as mine has been wiped off have had a premonition of the distant dawn, but who have from the heavens. There are worlds of infinite youth, la- perished because they lived rather in their premonition, boring in pain and in chaos, suns without brightness, fu- in their yearning, than in the reality of earthly facts. From ture gods in fetters, seas unnamed up to this time swelling a mass of such heroic hearts are composed layers of earth eternally toward happy shores! But He has already be- on which later will bloom the flower of serene days. come weary, He has already taken His seat upon the throne Iridion is a personification of this mass. But, though he and said, ‘I am’—and drooped His head! I deny Him not 690 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2000 —I see Him—mine eyes, wounded by His brightness, the future! turn away toward the darkness, toward my hopes! From IRIDION. Away from me! them shall come the victory! Choose! . . . Forsake me not MASINISSA. I will give to thee a thousand desires and as base men have forsaken thee. (He snatches him up from thousandfold means of satisfying them. I will raise shapes the ground.) Stand above this precipice and gaze toward of beauty for thee from the dead. Each one of them, ere the city of thine hatred! Dost thou know who shall wrest she fades away, shall burn herself out in thine embraces it from the hands of thy brothers, when, according to the —whether Helen of Troy, or the Idalian Venus, or the prophecy of Grimhilda, they shall come to plow up Italy daughter of Ptolemies. . . . On distant shores I will assign into furrows of blood and fields of ashes? Dost thou know to thee a race, obedient on the threshold of the palace, who shall grasp in the air the purple fluttering from the fierce in the day of battle. Amid the charms of flattery Caesars! The Nazarene!— And in him will live as an eter- thou wilt come to love thyself as thou hast loved Hellas. nal legacy the treason of the Senate and the cruelty of the With a king’s dread power and with a king’s benignant people. White hair will he have and an inexorable heart, love I will intoxicate thee, my son! Until I shall come, even as did the first of the Catos—his speech, only, at until I shall lay my sign upon thee anew . . . Together, times will be womanish and sweet. At his feet the men of then, eternally, without end, without rest, without hope, the North will experience a second childhood, and for the without love, until eternal vengeance shall be accom- second time he will deify Rome before the nations of the plished! earth! IRIDION. Let us go! For me Rome, for thee my soul! IRIDION. Ah! I have desired without measure, I have la- bored without rest in order to destroy, just as other men desire without measure and labor without rest in order to love and to bless at death the one whom they have loved Letters during life! Ah! And now, just as I am dying, thou Corrections announcest to me the immortality of Rome! I wish to correct two mistakes in two texts published MASINISSA. Despair not, for the time will come when in the SR (19:3, September 1999). the shadow of the cross will appear as a scorching heat to R. J. Hunter’s and L. V. Ryan’s article “Prospects for the nations, and in vain it will stretch forth its arms in the Polish Economy, 1999–2000,” incorrectly states that order once again to clasp to its bosom departing men. the current leader of the Christian National Union (ZChN) One after another will rise up and say: ‘No longer do we is Ryszard Czarnecki (p. 660). Czarnecki has been re- serve thee!’ Then at all the gates of the city will be heard placed by Marian Pilka. complaints and wailings; then the Genius of Rome will On page 642, an editorial remark in Jerzy Giedroyc’s again veil his face, and his weeping will be without end; text refers to Mr. Wellisz as “a Polish Jewish financier.” for in the Forum will remain only dust, in the Circus naught In fact, Leopold Wellisz was of Lutheran background. He but ruins, on the Capitol only shame! And I shall go up was a descendant of Wilhelm Wellisch, a German entre- and down over these meadows, among wild flocks and preneur who moved to Poland from the Rhineland in the pale shepherds, the last inhabitants of Rome—and my nineteenth century. The Wellisz family participated in the struggle upon earth will be drawing to its close! development of Poland’s railroads, sugar refineries, ar- IRIDION. My heart beats anew. Ah! That day! Is it still mament works (e.g., the factory “Pocisk” in Rembertów), far distant? and other industries. Leopold Wellisz was involved with MASINISSA. I myself can scarcely foresee it! the powerful “Lewiatan” industrial lobby and with the IRIDION. O Amphilochus, thy son was, then, only a Conservative Party. He was a personal friend of General dream, only a shadow, broken off from a distant future— Władysław Sikorski. In September 1939, Wellisz orga- and like an unseasonable plaything the Fates have dashed nized a successful evacuation of Poland’s works of art to him to pieces! (To MASINISSA) Leave me! Neither to thee the West. He joined the Sikorski government in France nor to any god will I render up my soul. Upon this rock, and, after 1940, he moved to New York. looking into the eyes of Rome, I will die, as I have lived, Wellisz was also a literary scholar. As a graduate stu- in loneliness of spirit! dent in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century, he MASINISSA. O my son, hearken to me! The paleness of discovered Cyprian Kamil Norwid’s archive. This dis- thy cheeks I will cast back to death. Anew will I kindle covery strengthened Norwid’s position as one of Poland’s the hearth of strength in thy bosom. I will give to thee great Romantic poets. forgetfulness of the past, I will give to thee ignorance of Marek Chodakiewicz, Los Angeles City College, January 2000 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 691 California Politycznych Okresu Stalinowskiego. Gražyna Lipiƒska, Ro- Announcements and Notes man Aftanazy, Zbigniew Herbert, Halina Zakrzewska, Wojciech Expiring subscriptions: alas, we apologize, but “one Ziembiƒski, Jacek Trznadel, Jan Malicki and Andrzej Nowak. The Jerzy Łojek Foundation is associated with the Józef strike and you are out” rule will apply Piłsudski Institute in New York. We are streamlining our subscription service. Bills and re- More Links minders will no longer be enclosed with consecutive issues. They will be mailed separately. We shall be able to afford only The Sarmatian Review has recently been linked to the BigEye ONE notice about expiring subscriptions. If you receive a sub- (http://www.bigeye.com), a huge educational and intellectual scription notice after receiving the current issue of the Sarmatian site which provides links to major world periodicals and news Review, it means that your subscription expired with the cur- services, in addition to featuring sites on just about everything. rent issue or earlier. No further notices will be sent, and no Polish Film Festival in Houston in November 2000 further issues of The Sarmatian Review will be dispatched. Your Only eleven months separate us from the Fourth Annual cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated. We also greatly Polish Film Festival in Houston. The Festival’s coordinator is appreciate those subscribers who send in their subscriptions Dr. Zbigniew Wojciechowski ([email protected]). Details without being reminded to do so. will soon be available on the Forum Polonia Page (www.forum- Publication Series in Polish and Polish-American Stud- polonia-houston.com). ies The Polish American Historical Association, the Chair of Polish and Polish American Studies at Central Connecticut State About the Authors University, St. Mary’s College, and the Polish Institute of Arts Anthony Bukoski is Professor of English at the Univer- and Sciences of America will contribute to the financing of a sity of Wisconsin-Superior. His book, Children of Strang- series of books on Polish and Polish-American topics to be ers, won the Oskar Halecki Prize from the Polish Ameri- published by Ohio University Press. The Series’ Editor is John can Historical Association. J. Bukowczyk, Professor of History at Wayne State Univer- John J. Bukowczyk is Professor of History at Wayne State sity and author of And My Children Did Not Know Me: A His- Polish Americans and Their His- tory of the Polish Americans. The series “will recruit manu- University and editor of scripts on Polish immigration and ethnic communities, the coun- tory: Community, Culture, and Politics (1996). try of origin, and its various peoples in history, anthropology, Anna Cienciala is Professor of History at the University cultural studies, political economy, current politics, and related of Kansas. fields.” For further information, contact Prof. John J. Danuta Z. Hutchins holds a PhD from the University of Bukowczyk, Department of History, Wayne State University, Minnesota. She is an independent scholar and translator. at (313) 577-2799 or [email protected], or Gillian Joseph A. Kotarba is Professor of Sociology at the Uni- Berchowitz, Senior Editor, Ohio University Press, at (740) 593- versity of Houston. 1159 or [email protected]. Zygmunt Krasiƒski (1812–1859) is a Polish Romantic Rice University ranked 14 out of 2,000 American col- poet, playwright and essayist. leges and universities Bogna Lorence-Kot is Professor of History at the Cali- U. S. News and World Report rankings of American insti- fornia College of Arts & Crafts. tutions of higher learning came out in August 1999. The rankings are organized as follows: the top 50; tier 2; tier 3; tier Wiesław Janusz Mikulski, M.A., is a high school teacher 4. Since Sarmatian Review Online issues from Rice Univer- in Ostroł∏ka, Poland. His poetry appeared in numerous sity, we are pleased to report that Rice was ranked (together Polish publications including W drodze,Wi∏ê and Znak. with Brown and Northwestern) as #14 among the top 50 Ameri- He is the author of several collections of poetry. can colleges and universities. In faculty resourcefulness, Rice George Rapall Noyes (1873–1952) was an American ranked even higher, as #6 in the top 50. #1 overall was Cal Slavicist and translator from the Polish. He was Profes- Tech, #2, Harvard. The rankings can be accessed at http:// sor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/natunivs/ of Southern California. natu_a2.htm. John Radzilowski received a doctorate in History from The Piłsudski Institute - Jerzy Łojek Foundation Prizes the University of Arizona in 1999. He is a ranking mem- Since 1991, the Jerzy Łojek Foundation (established by ber of several Polish American organizations. Danuta J. Cisek and Andrzej M. Cisek in honor of Polish histo- Suzanna Strempek Shea is the author of Lily of the Valley rian Jerzy Łojek) has given yearly awards to Polish periodi- SR . cals, scholars and writers who distinguished themselves by (reviewed in this issue of the ) Her other novels are writing about modern Polish history. In chronological order, Hoopi Shoopi Donna and Selling the Lite of Heaven. the Prize has been awarded to the following: J∏drzej Tucholski, James R. Thompson is Professor of Statistics at Rice Kazimierz Zamorski, Jaworzniacy: Pismo Zwiàzku Wi∏êniów University. 692 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2000 Thank You Note Central Europe Study Group The Sarmatian Review would like to thank the following Rice University individuals and institutions for their donations to the Sarmatian Review Publication Fund: presents Mr. Andrzej M. Cisek; Mr. & Mrs. Vassil & Roza two important lectures Ekimov; Professor & Mrs. Ralph Frankowski; Dr. in February and March 2000 Boguslaw Godlewski and Mrs. Maria Godlewski; Jo- seph A, Jachimczyk, M.D., J.D; Col. Francis C. Kajencki, U.S.Army (ret.); Mr. & Mrs. Jan and Hanna Reflections on the Holocaust Karon; Dr. & Mrs. Martin Lukas Lawera; Mr. Wojciech Piasecki; Mr. & Mrs. Richard C. & Alina Prusinski of Speaker: Dr. Marcus Leuchter POLYMER CONCRETE CONSULTANTS, INC., Dr. Houston Holocaust Museum & Mrs. Andrew and Patricia Thomas.
Time: February 3, 2000 (Thursday), 7:30 PM Thank you—we rely on your support.
Place: 110 Rayzor Hall
Come and hear a Holocaust survivor from Poland. RADIO COURIER Refreshments will be served. Polish American Radio Network P.O. Box 130146, Houston, Texas 77219 Polish Language Program The Changing Social and Political Saturday 11:00 AM, 1520 KYND Realities tel./fax: (281) 872-1062 in Central and Eastern Europe email: [email protected]
Speaker: Professor Zdzislaw Krasnodebski A and M Technical Services Inc. Director, Forschungstelle Ostmitteleuropa Metallurgical Testing Laboratory University of Bremen, Germany 407 Sylvester Road Houston, Texas 77009 Time: March 17, 2000 (Friday), 7:30 PM Anthony Rudnicki Place: 110 Rayzor Hall Chief Metallurgist Come and hear about changes in German-Polish Phone: 713-691-1765 Fax: 713-695-7241 relations. Refreshments will be served. The Anya Tish Gallery 1740 Sunset Boulevard. Houston, Texas 77005 phone/fax: 713-523-2299 Give where it really Artwork and paintings from Central and Eastern Europe counts:
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