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Changes following Stalin's death

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Katyń: shameful to speak of
Jan Józef Lipski Social activist
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Katyń, it's almost shameful to speak of. The name is somewhat symbolic because out of the several thousand Polish officers whose total number will never be known, a much smaller number was found in the Katyń graves, and today we know that only men from the camp at Kozielsk but there were other camps in Starobielsk and Ostaszkowo, too. And those soldiers are buried somewhere else, no one knows where so that's why this name is a little symbolic. Those people were simply executed, shot in the back of the head, their hands bound by barbed wire. It was a horrendous massacre – irrespective of who it was, whoever it was, this was terrible. This was also in the context of the effect it had on the potential of the nation. As they were mostly reservist officers, you could say they were the best of the Polish intelligentsia, a huge intellectual potential, which is of great significance in the life of a nation. But whoever it was, it obviously was just as awful a crime. Except that I don't think anyone in Poland believed initially that... nobody, well, I knew one lunatic who quite seriously and apparently sincerely, believes to this day that the Germans did it, but then there's no accounting for mental illness. This is something I do not understand to this day. Why were these matters not dealt with during the time of Khrushchev and Gomułka? There was a simple way of saying at the time: this is another Stalinist crime, Khrushchev spoke about many of Stalin's crimes, this was another one. To be honest, in terms of numbers, these few thousand among the many millions whom Stalin murdered, well, we Poles find it painful, but ultimately it's not all that shocking seen against the background of all the millions of people murdered by him. Why wasn't it done and why was this thing allowed to drag on up to now, greatly damaging the 'love' of Polish citizens for the Soviet Union. I'm not able to understand this, it's some kind of political stupidity. I didn't have any close relative in Katyń, but it's not hard to find someone among my acquaintances and colleagues and friends, who lost a father, an uncle, an older brother at Katyń.

No nie, to Katyń, to aż wstyd mówić. Nazwa trochę symboliczna, dlatego że z kilkunastu tysięcy oficerów, których nie można się polskich doliczyć, tam znaleziono w grobach katyńskich znacznie mniejszą liczbę i dzisiaj już wiadomo, że byli tam tylko z obozu w Kozielsku, a były jeszcze obozy w Starobielsku i Ostaszkowie. I tam, tamci leżą gdzieś indziej. Nikt nie wie gdzie, więc nazwa trochę symboliczna, no a ludzi po prostu rozstrzelali, w tył głowy, właśnie związanych drutem kolczastym. Zupełnie potworna masakra, bez względu na to kto by... ktokolwiek by to był, to było okropne, a to jeszcze tak w kategoriach licząc pewnego potencjału narodowego, no to ponieważ przeważali tam oficerowie rezerwy, to... to po prostu był to – jak się to mówi – kwiat inteligencji polskiej, ogromny potencjał... intelektualny, co w życiu narodu się też bardzo liczy, to... już... Ale ktokolwiek by to był, byłaby to oczywiście również straszna zbrodnia. Z tym że nikt w Polsce chyba od samego początku nie wierzył, że… no nikt – znałem jednego wariata, który zupełnie poważnie do dzisiejszego dnia myśli, że to zrobili Niemcy i zdaje się szczerze zupełnie, no ale różne schorzenia psychiczne się zdarzają. W każdym razie to jest rzecz dla mnie do dzisiejszego dnia niezrozumiała. Dlaczego za Chruszczowa i Gomułki tych rzeczy nie ucięto? Był wtedy prosty sposób powiedzenia: no jeszcze jedna zbrodnia stalinowska – Chruszczow mówił o wielu zbrodniach Stalina – jeszcze jedna zbrodnia stalinowska. Tak prawdę mówiąc, jeżeli w liczbach liczyć, no to prawdę mówiąc te kilkanaście tysięcy wśród tych ogromnych milionów, które Stalin wymordował, no to nas Polaków to szczególnie boli, no, ale... ale to ostatecznie nie jest aż tak szokujące na tle tych milionów przez niego wymordowanych. Dlaczego tego nie zrobiono i dlaczego pozwolono na to, że ta rzecz się ciągle ciągnie z wielką niekorzyścią dla „miłości” obywateli polskich do Związku Radzieckiego, no tego nie jestem w stanie zrozumieć, jakaś głupota polityczna.

Ja nie miałem nikogo bliskiego w Katyniu, ale rzeczywiście nietrudno znaleźć normalnie wśród znajomych, kolegów, przyjaciół i tak dalej, kogoś kto stracił ojca, wuja, stryja, starszego brata tam.

Jan Józef Lipski (1926-1991) was one of Poland's best known political activists. He was also a writer and a literary critic. As a soldier in the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), he fought in the Warsaw Uprising. In 1976, following worker protests, he co-founded the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR). His active opposition to Poland's communist authorities led to his arrest and imprisonment on several occasions. In 1987, he re-established and headed the Polish Socialist Party. Two years later, he was elected to the Polish Senate. He died in 1991 while still in office. For his significant work, Lipski was honoured with the Cross of the Valorous (Krzyż Walecznych), posthumously with the Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1991) and with the highest Polish decoration, the Order of the White Eagle (2006).

Listeners: Marcel Łoziński Jacek Petrycki

Film director Marcel Łoziński was born in Paris in 1940. He graduated from the Film Directing Department of the National School of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź in 1971. In 1994, he was nominated for an American Academy Award and a European Film Academy Award for the documentary, 89 mm from Europe. Since 1995, he has been a member of the American Academy of Motion Picture Art and Science awarding Oscars. He lectured at the FEMIS film school and the School of Polish Culture of Warsaw University. He ran documentary film workshops in Marseilles. Marcel Łoziński currently lectures at Andrzej Wajda’s Master School for Film Directors. He also runs the Dragon Forum, a European documentary film workshop.

Cinematographer Jacek Petrycki was born in Poznań, Poland in 1948. He has worked extensively in Poland and throughout the world. His credits include, for Agniezka Holland, Provincial Actors (1979), Europe, Europe (1990), Shot in the Heart (2001) and Julie Walking Home (2002), for Krysztof Kieslowski numerous short films including Camera Buff (1980) and No End (1985). Other credits include Journey to the Sun (1998), directed by Jesim Ustaoglu, which won the Golden Camera 300 award at the International Film Camera Festival, Shooters (2000) and The Valley (1999), both directed by Dan Reed, Unforgiving (1993) and Betrayed (1995) by Clive Gordon both of which won the BAFTA for best factual photography. Jacek Petrycki is also a teacher and a filmmaker.

Tags: Katyń, Kozielsko, Starobielsk, Ostaszków, Nikita Khrushchev

Duration: 3 minutes, 3 seconds

Date story recorded: October 1989

Date story went live: 09 March 2011