Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People | Adam Zagajewski - Anti-Semitism raises its ugly head (21/50) @webofstories | Uploaded April 2019 | Updated October 2024, 8 hours ago.
To listen to more of Adam Zagajewski’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzyCHpawMfzZc5HzhP38Qz7
Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021) was a Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist. He is considered as one of the leading poets of the Generation of '68 or the Polish New Wave (Polish: Nowa fala) and is one of Poland's most prominent contemporary poets. [Listener: Andrzej Wolski; date recorded: 2018]
TRANSCRIPT: One very significant element of the March events was that one of my very good friends, whose family was Jewish, began to pack up his things in readiness for... But that was a year later because these departures often took a long time. Jaś Ringler eventually went to Sweden where he still lives. It caused me a lot of distress because I found that whole wave of anti-Semitism intensely painful. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was evil, this was quite simply wrong, that these people were being harmed grievously as was, in some way, Poland, by revealing this dreadful, anti-Semitic aspect, and thanks to Jasio I followed this issue and I knew all of these various details in advance. For instance, I know that he – although I don't know if he told me this later – went to a tailor to have a few suits made for him in preparation for his departure because everything would be more expensive in the West so he had to prepare for that. I remember he told me which tailor he'd gone to, still in Gliwice because he was a friend from Gliwice and from Kraków – he'd studied in Kraków, too. So I kept track of him and then later, much later I met other people who had left Poland. But here I was able to witness his departure as it happened, his hesitations, his uncertainty – in the end, his entire family left and he decided to go with them.
So in a way, I came to know both elements of that March, namely, on the one hand there were the police beatings although, as I've said, I never felt the blow of a police truncheon on my back, but I was a witness to these beatings, they were happening right in front of me. It was a complete disregard of our dignity, of our demands. And then on the other hand, there was this ingredient of anti-Semitism, this enkindling of anti-Semitism within Poland.
To listen to more of Adam Zagajewski’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzyCHpawMfzZc5HzhP38Qz7
Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021) was a Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist. He is considered as one of the leading poets of the Generation of '68 or the Polish New Wave (Polish: Nowa fala) and is one of Poland's most prominent contemporary poets. [Listener: Andrzej Wolski; date recorded: 2018]
TRANSCRIPT: One very significant element of the March events was that one of my very good friends, whose family was Jewish, began to pack up his things in readiness for... But that was a year later because these departures often took a long time. Jaś Ringler eventually went to Sweden where he still lives. It caused me a lot of distress because I found that whole wave of anti-Semitism intensely painful. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was evil, this was quite simply wrong, that these people were being harmed grievously as was, in some way, Poland, by revealing this dreadful, anti-Semitic aspect, and thanks to Jasio I followed this issue and I knew all of these various details in advance. For instance, I know that he – although I don't know if he told me this later – went to a tailor to have a few suits made for him in preparation for his departure because everything would be more expensive in the West so he had to prepare for that. I remember he told me which tailor he'd gone to, still in Gliwice because he was a friend from Gliwice and from Kraków – he'd studied in Kraków, too. So I kept track of him and then later, much later I met other people who had left Poland. But here I was able to witness his departure as it happened, his hesitations, his uncertainty – in the end, his entire family left and he decided to go with them.
So in a way, I came to know both elements of that March, namely, on the one hand there were the police beatings although, as I've said, I never felt the blow of a police truncheon on my back, but I was a witness to these beatings, they were happening right in front of me. It was a complete disregard of our dignity, of our demands. And then on the other hand, there was this ingredient of anti-Semitism, this enkindling of anti-Semitism within Poland.
