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Losing Lwów, gaining Gliwice

RELATED STORIES

Family life in Silesia
Adam Zagajewski Poet
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At the time, my grandfather was retired and my father was a young employee of the Lwów Polytechnic. Not, of course, during the German occupation, only when the Russians arrived for the second time. My mother was a lawyer, but she didn't practise her profession for long; after we'd moved to Silesia, she stopped working. By that I mean she worked from home and did all kinds of things, but she wasn't in full-time employment. My father was an engineer; he'd graduated from the Lwów Polytechnic. He was an engineer but was slightly torn between technical subjects and the humanities because he was deeply interested in history and he read a lot. From what I know, he would always read history books and then tell me about them. He even wrote a kind of autobiography which I asked him to do after my mother died. I asked him to write about his life and so he did, and there he repeated what he had told me earlier that before he decided what he was going to study, he wavered between going to the polytechnic or studying history, and I think that wavering stayed with him. I know that... he lived a long life, he was almost 100 years old and his final years were very difficult because he was losing his memory, but for a long time he was completely alert and he would read... at some point, he abandoned technical literature that dealt with his area of specialisation and read mainly history books. So there was a certain feel for the humanities in our house.

Mój dziadek był wtedy na emeryturze, mój ojciec był młodym pracownikiem Politechniki Lwowskiej. Oczywiście nie w czasie okupacji niemieckiej, tylko jak Rosjanie przyszli po raz drugi. Moja mama była prawniczką, ale niedługo wykonywała swój zawód później, już jak przyjechaliśmy na Śląsk, to już nie pracowała. To znaczy pracowała w domu i robiła różne rzeczy, ale nie miała posady. Mój ojciec był inżynierem, skończył Politechnikę Lwowską. Był inżynierem trochę rozdartym między... między właśnie takie sprawy politechniczne a humanistykę, dlatego że go bardzo historia interesowała, dużo czytał. Z tego co wiem zawsze czytał książki historyczne i opowiadał mi później, a nawet napisał pewnego rodzaju autobiografię, o którą go prosiłem po śmierci mojej mamy. Prosiłem, żeby napisał o swoim życiu i on napisał i tam powtarza to, co mi wcześniej mówił, że jeśli... przed wyborem studiów wahał się między politechniką a historią i to wahanie, zdaje się, jakoś mu towarzyszyło. Wiem, że jak... żył bardzo długo, prawie... nieomal 100 lat i ostatnie lata już były bardzo ciężkie, bo tracił pamięć, ale przez długi czas był absolutnie świadomy i właśnie był... i czytał... w pewnym momencie przestał, porzucił książki techniczne ze swojej dziedziny i czytał głównie historię. Tak że był pewien... pewien klimat humanistyczny w domu.

Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021) was a Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist. He was awarded the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award and the 2017 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature. 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.

Listeners: Andrzej Wolski

Film director and documentary maker, Andrzej Wolski has made around 40 films since 1982 for French television, the BBC, TVP and other TV networks. He specializes in portraits and in historical films. Films that he has directed or written the screenplay for include Kultura, which he co-directed with Agnieszka Holland, and KOR which presents the history of the Worker’s Defence Committee as told by its members. Andrzej Wolski has received many awards for his work, including the UNESCO Grand Prix at the Festival du Film d’Art.

Tags: Lwów Polytechnic, Silesia

Duration: 2 minutes, 17 seconds

Date story recorded: March 2018

Date story went live: 25 April 2019