It’s Katy Carr’s newest single. You may find yourself singing, “we gonna drive away-ay-ay, we gonna drive away-ayay,” like I’m doing right now. It happens each time I listen to the song, which tells the true story of a daring 1942 Auschwitz escape by a young Polish Boy Scout, Kazimierz Piechowski. Katy wrote the song not knowing he was still alive. When she found out he was, she went to Poland to meet him – and says that meeting changed her life.

The very talented Ms. Carr released her album Paszport in Poland on Sept. 17, 2012. That’s when I first heard of her – Polish websites and news feeds were abuzz with news of the young Polish-British singer/songwriter. She chose the date specifically: It’s when Soviet Russia invaded Poland in 1939. Nazi Germany had, of course, invaded Poland on September 1, beginning the terrible second world war.

I began googling her, and found an interview she’d given to a Polish TV station in Chicago. In it, she’s wearing a 1930s style red-and-white outfit and a tiny tilted red-and-white hat, a Warsaw Uprising headband, and speaking Polish with a posh British accent. I thought, who is this girl? We must talk.

We chatted on the phone on a chilly fall afternoon. She’d just finished shooting a video and I was home with a cold. We were both a bit sniffly (the woods she’d been shooting in were very damp, she said) but also very excited to be speaking with each other. She’s been touring lots, and includes screenings at her concerts of a short documentary film she produced about her meeting Kazimierz Piechowski.

Here’s our chat.

* * *

Who are your audiences? And how do people who don’t know anything about Poland or Polish history react to the stories you tell?

The audiences have been quite mixed here in Britain. British people of all ages, children. When we screen the film, Kazik and the Kommander’s Car, we ask that the children be 10 and older. The parents are always amazed that young boys sit very, very still. It has an incredible effect.

Kazik’s story is very exciting. It’s a story of escape and he succeeds. It’s a story of adversity where the impossible became possible. For children especially, this is very potent. And it’s a great way of finding out about Polish history.

We’ve had people crying, we’ve had people weeping, we’ve had people smiling.

Polish audiences, their reactions are slightly different to the British. Polish audiences seem to be very emotionally linked to it. British audiences are very emotionally linked too but are very angry that Poland was treated badly. British audiences, the children get very upset when they learn that Kazik was imprisoned for being a Boy Scout. So do British people – they don’t understand that Auschwitz wasn’t just for Jewish people, it’s a big revelation for them.

Polish people, they really long for their country when they see me play and the film. We’re trying to highlight the really wonderful things about Poland, and the reasons why people should fall in love with Poland, and the wonderful people that come out of Poland.

I think that Kazik is one of the most wonderful people, he’s a wonderful advocate for anything connected to Poland. He loves his country. He wants to share it with people. That’s transferred onto me. I feel like I need to tell people what happened too.

You released your single on September 17th and that’s not a date as known in the West as September 1st. People might know that the Nazis invaded on September 1st, but in Poland that second date is also so significant. Why is the date meaningful to you?

I don’t think many people in the West know that the Soviets invaded Poland as well as the Germans. I think that’s quite a misnomer in Western history and education. When I say to British people, even, “Did you know the Soviets invaded Poland on the 17th of September, and that half of Poland was occupied by Nazis and half occupied by Soviets,” people don’t seem to understand that. And then that Poland was basically given to Russia – they don’t understand why.

It was quite a significant day because of the subject matter of my music. The people who’d inspired my songs and who’d inspired me to find out about Poland and give me my love of Poland again, a lot of those people were the veterans of World War II. They were the people who survived deportation to Siberia. They survived being imprisoned there, a very long train journey, being ripped out from their homes and taken in the darkness.

I can’t imagine how traumatic it must have been, and terribly upsetting on all emotional levels to be torn out from your home country, put into a very traumatic environment geographically and climatically, and then not have the chance to return to your country – to lose your passage back.

Mr. Kazimierz Piechowski (photographed with Katy at the Polish Embassy in London), he told me [how] after the war had finished, he wanted to continue his studies as an engineer. But due to his involvement with the Polish partisans and the Armia Krajowa – the Home Army, the Soviet authorities in Poland sentenced him to a 10-year imprisonment. He was fighting for an independent Poland. That wasn’t what the Soviet and communist authorities were interested in promoting to the Polish public.

A lot of the veterans would tell me that they never felt free. On one side, the war ended with Germany but it didn’t end in Poland because they were thrown into another war – the Cold War.

And so it was really meaningful for me to put that record out on that day, because I wanted to honor and commemorate all the people that had shared their stories with me, and had given me a renewed interest in Poland – without whom I wouldn’t have been able to have written this record.

I call my album Paszport because of all the people who lost their right to go back to Poland. All over Europe, people couldn’t return back. And also in Poland, people couldn’t travel. Pan Kazik lost his rights as a Polish citizen when he became a number in Auschwitz. There’s lots of reasons why I called it Paszport.

There’s a poem by Jerzy Harasymowicz, it’s not a very well known poem but I think it says everything about my album. „Masz paszport, więc jesteś” – “You have a passport, therefore you exist.”

What was it like spending time with Mr. Piechowski? I’ve interviewed veterans and have this sense of duality when I’m with them. On one hand, they’ve gone through so much. And yet, here they are – normal people, and you drink tea with them and have the most wonderful chats with them.

It was a great honor. I wrote the song Kommander’s Car without knowing that Kazik was still alive. I wanted to give my song to the Museum of Auschwitz, and a lady there told me that he was alive. I had no choice; I had to meet him. There was no question in my mind: I had to give this song to him. I’d never managed to meet my inspiration. All my inspirations come from history, they’ve passed away, are not available anymore.

When I went to meet Kazik, I didn’t want him to think that I was a person coming to take his story. I didn’t know whether he’d be open to me, whether he’d like me. I didn’t speak very good Polish, and I spoke to him on the phone, and sent him a letter and a CD, and all he said was, I understand everything. So he made it very, very easy for me.

It was the most wonderful meeting. It was a hard line between being extremely excited to share this piece of creativity with him, and also not wanting to upset him, bring anything up that he didn’t want to talk about.

The effects of the meeting have changed my life. He’s given me my patriotism to Poland. Kazik injected me with a sense of longing for this country. As a teenager, my connection had ceased, like a lot of people in Polonia. It’s very hard then to come back into the culture. There was quite a bad image of Poland in the West, so I had kept quiet about my Polish roots.

When I met Kazik, he was like the grandfather I’d never met before. He’s a true patriot; he’s given his knowledge to a younger generation who can take it forward.

I watched an interview with you at a Polish TV station in Chicago, and you’re wearing a fantastic red-and-white outfit.

The style of the 1930s and 40s comes from my English grandma. She taught me how to sing songs. When my grandfather died, she didn’t speak to anybody. And then I asked her about the Second World War, and she told me about it. She told me things like, even though it was a really awful time, it was a time when everybody helped each other. It was a fantastic show of camaraderie.

She showed me some pictures, and her dresses. I thought, they’re beautiful and I love the hairstyles. And then she gave me some of her dresses, and she gave me a hat. I just realized that my body is really suited to this era. They’re really lovely dresses to wear, and I don’t like wearing modern dresses, because they don’t fit my figure. I don’t feel feminine in them. I like the 30s and 40s clothes because I like the way they’re cut. And I like the fact that they have lots of different seams and they’re beautifully made.

You’re also an aviator – which is awesome.

When I was a teenager, I had to be kept out of mischief because I was called a bit disruptive. There was a thing in our school called the Air Cadets, which is an off-branch youth organization connected with the Royal Air Force. Every weekend we could go shooting and we could go flying. And we could do lots of physical exercise. It really inspired me. I loved getting into the uniform and loved going and spending my weekends waiting to fly the airplanes.

I love music but my heart was into flying planes, and learning everything about the aircraft and being very actively involved with all the people who were connected with the Air Cadets. There weren’t very many women, or girls, doing it. So oftentimes I would have to be with just men. I quite liked being in male company.

Flying was a thrill. When I first did it when I was 13, this pilot took me in this plane called a Chipmunk. We did a loop, we did a slow turn and I thought, this is it. This is it, man. It was love – it was love in the air. I couldn’t get enough of it.

Poland has these amazing World War II pilots; everything in your life seems to be tied together.

Without the Polish air effort fighting alongside the Royal Air effort, we certainly wouldn’t have won the Battle of Britain, and we would probably be under German rule right now. So we do have to be extremely grateful for their contribution.

Your mum is Polish and your dad is Scottish-English. How did they meet and end up in England?

My mother was laying pipelines for an oil company in Poland and my father was an electrical engineer and they met in a place called Włocławek. Don’t quite know what happened on the first night but it got quite jolly and they must’ve clicked. I lived in Poland for the first five years of my life, because my father was working there.

It was communist Poland then. The złoty, one minute it would be like 2,000 for a loaf of a bread, and then the next moment it would be like 100. The fluctuation in currency was quite pronounced.

The family had to wait in queues for a refrigerator, because only a certain number were being delivered to the town. Everyone wanted to queue but when you got to the front of the line only six were delivered. The first six people got them, and then you had to have something substandard.

I remember I ate an orange and I threw the orange peel in the bin and [my auntie Wanda] went to the bin and took the orange peel out. Then she sugared it and used it for her cake. You really couldn’t get sugar peel there. It sounds insane.

When did you leave Poland?

In the mid-80s. We would go [back] for holidays. We’d see quite a lot of the communist Poland. I didn’t realize how valuable that was – seeing Poland in that state – until now, because it’s changed quite significantly.

What are you working on now?

There are a couple of dreams I want to fulfill. I want to do a tour of the top 10 universities of Poland. Then I want to do a tour of Polonia around the world. I want to continue my tour of Polonia in America. I want to play for Polish people in America. When I play for them, they say that I’m their voice because a lot of them don’t have a voice. I want to meet as many Polish people as possible – I love them, I think they’re amazing.

I’d like to inspire people my own age to get involved with Poland again by sharing these stories from the Polish past, and the people that managed to achieve such incredible things with such little support.

There’s nothing to be frightened of. Very beautiful things come out of Poland. We’ve got to be really proud of who we are.

Watch

The film Katy made with director Hannah Lovell of Katy’s meeting with Kazimierz Piechowski.

In it, a 90-year-old (and incredibly spry) Kazik shows Katy around his garden, his home, a monument dedicated to his fellow Scouts who were killed during the war. She plays her song for him and his wife Iga; he calls Katy “mój skarbie” – “my treasure.” It’s lovely and moving and very much worth a look.

Imagery

Courtesy of Katy Carr

My video interview with Ms. McDonald:

General Edward Rowny is almost 96 years on the Sunday afternoon I visit him at his Maryland home in late March 2012.

He’s made an indelible mark on U.S. 20th century history: He’s commanded troops in World War II, Korea, Vietnam. He’s advised five U.S. presidents – from Nixon through Bush – and their special advisors on arms control. For his work as President Ronald Reagan’s chief arms negotiator with the Soviet Union, he was awarded the Presidential Citizen’s Medal. The inscription on his medal reads, “one of the principal architects of peace through strength policy.”

He’s also played an important role in Poland’s history: As a young man, he attended Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s funeral in New York City. 50 years later, he escorted Paderewski’s remains from the U.S. national cemetery – Arlington – to an independent Poland.

And his work continues with a scholarship foundation he’s created for Polish students to study at DC’s Georgetown University.

We chat in his study, filled with books, papers, files, and computer equipment. “Do you have a week?” he says with a laugh when we begin.

* * *

Summer Olympics: 1936, Berlin

In 1936, 19-year-old Edward Rowny was awarded a Kościuszko Foundation scholarship for a summer semester of study in Poland. Born to a Polish father and Polish-American mother, he was eager to explore his roots – and Europe.

I went to Kraków, to Jagiellonian University. There were just lectures – no exams. Kościuszko Foundation gave you a free rail pass to go all over Europe. If you left the university on a trip, they’d give you $1 a day for food. If you ate cheese and bread and a little fruit it was enough.

I made the grand tour – Venice, Rome, Florence, Vienna, London, Paris. Finally I went to Berlin for the Olympics.

It cost me $2 to get in – that was 2 days of food.

I saw an ad for an American-style breakfast at this famous hotel (during the Cold War it was in East Germany). It was pretty good, only about 50 cents. A man asked if I wanted a glass of orange juice. I said yes. When the bill came, it was $2.50, so $2 for a glass of orange juice.

I went to the Olympics. I saw Jesse Owens, the black athlete, win gold medals. I saw Hitler turn his back on him. I saw the goose-stepping Nazis. I said, my God, there’s going to be a war. We’ve got to stop these soldiers. I came home and applied for West Point.

Paderewski’s Funeral: 1941, New York

I.J. Paderewski died in New York City on June 29, 1941. His funeral mass was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on July 3. His body could not be returned to Poland – at that time in the throes of Nazi occupation. Instead, he was interred at the National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, presumably till the war’s end. In reality, it would take 50 years and the fall of communism before Paderewski’s remains would be returned to a free Poland.

In the summer of 1941, Edward Rowny had just graduated from college and was on his way to West Point Military Academy.

My grandmother had been a governess before she disgraced herself by marrying a sergeant. Her family thought she should marry at least an officer. They disowned her. She and her husband came to the U.S.

A very cultured woman, she spoke five languages. She would read to us in French, Goethe in German, Mickiewicz in Polish, and translate to English for us.

She played Paderewski’s records over and over again until they were thin. She taught me about Paderewski. She said when he died, “I want you to promise me to do everything you can to get his body back to Poland.”

I went to the funeral. 5,000 people lined on the streets of New York. Cardinal Spellman gave a wonderful eulogy about how Paderewski would someday return to Poland.

President Roosevelt said, bury [Paderewski] at Arlington Cemetery – our national shrine. Our laws said, no, only US citizens can be buried there. So he said, put him there temporarily until Poland will be free again.

Paderewski and JFK: 1961, Arlington Cemetery, Virginia

In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy and his wife learned that Paderewski’s body was “temporarily” interred at Arlington Cemetery – but with no marker.

Brigadier General Edward Rowny was in Vietnam, commanding troops and testing helicopters as combat vehicles.

President Kennedy sent for me. His wife was a great admirer of Paderewski, and she said she was unhappy because nobody knew that Paderewski was interred at Arlington. She had [JFK] put up a marker saying, here is Paderewski’s body.

Kennedy invited me to come back from Vietnam and be part of the ceremony. I have a tape of the speech [Kennedy] made.

“Little could seem more antagonistic among human activities than music and statesmanship. Yet Paderewski was a virtuoso of both. This was no accident; for he knew that both were rooted in the idea of liberty — that both depended on the freedom of man to respond to his own vision of life.”
– excerpt from May 9, 1963 JFK speech at Arlington National Cemetery

JFK found out [about me] from Paul Hume. [Ed. note.: Hume was the music editor for the Washington Post, 1946-1982, and the author of ,The Lion of Poland: The Story of Paderewski.]

I told Hume how wonderful his book was and how much I admired Paderewski. Jackie read Hume’s column in the Washington Post, that nobody knew where Paderewski’s body was. Jackie brought that to JFK’s attention. He talked to Hume and Hume told him of me.

I came from Vietnam as the “senior ranking member of the Army of Polish origin,” – I wasn’t. I don’t know who was, but I was just a brand new Brigadier General. I’m sure there were others more senior than me of Polish origin. Someday I’ll have to look that up.

Taking Paderewski Home: 1991, Arlington and Warsaw

Poland and the U.S. began discussions on the return of Paderewski’s body in the mid-1980s. As an arms-control negotiator during the Ronald Reagan administration, General Rowny spoke with Lech Wałęsa about Paderewski’s return in 1985 and with Polish officials in 1986 and 1989. Poland’s first non-communist Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki formally requested the body’s return in 1990. Poland’s first independently elected President, Lech Wałęsa, requested that the return happen in 1991 – after Poland’s first democratic parliamentary elections.

It was Retired Lieutenant General Rowny who planned and executed the remains’ return.

I took the body back to Poland after having been sued by a group of 18 DC lawmakers for grave robbing. They said that Paderewski loved America and he should remain in America.

I went to court.

Before I did that I went to the Library of Congress and looked for Paderewski’s will. He had no will. But he had a letter which he dictated to his sister Antonina.

The day before he died, he asked his sister to come have a glass of champagne with him. He said, we’ve lived a good, fruitful life and we should be grateful. He said, when I die, I want my heart to stay with my love. That’s all he said. He said that when he was in the U.S.

I went to the judge. I said, he wanted his heart to stay in the U.S. Ergo, his body should go somewhere else. The judge said, you’re right. With $18,000 of legal fees and $10,000 of court fees, I won the case.

When we took the body back, we had a huge parade. 10,000 airmen, soldiers, sailors, lined the streets all the way from Arlington Cemetery to the airport.

Wałęsa gave me the flag that was around Paderewski’s bier. I gave that flag to the Polish Museum in Chicago. He also gave me 2 volumes of books with [signatures of] dignitaries who came to see Paderewski when he lay in state in Warsaw, and I gave those to the Polish American Cultural Society [Ed. note: now the Kościuszko Foundation’s DC chapter].

Paderewski’s Heart: A Mystery

Paderewski’s heart was removed from his body when he died, and eventually placed in a crypt at the Cypress Hills Cemetery in Queens, New York. But the location remained unknown until 1959, when two Polish-Americans who were visiting graves at the cemetery saw a small marble plate with “Ignacy Jan Paderewski, 1860-1941.”

For an excellent account of the mystery of Paderewski’s heart, read Danuta Piatkowska’s article.

We had a competition to see where to put the heart. I thought it should go to Chicago. Paderewski loved Chicago. But there was a very enterprising young Monsignor at the Lady of Częstochowa in Doylestown, PA and the heart went there.

The Paderewski Scholarship Fund: 2004 – present

In the 1990s, Rowny worked on a project he called a “living memorial,” for U.S. students to go to Poland and Polish students to come to the U.S. to study international relations.

The young people I talked to knew nothing about Paderewski. He’d been expunged from textbooks because he believed in democracy. I spent an awful amount of money and time and went bankrupt on it. I gave it up.

In 2004, I said, let’s do something else on a more modest scale. Let’s have Polish students come to the U.S. for a semester of study at Georgetown University. I paid for the first scholarship out of my own meager savings – $7500.

Then I turned my rolodex and files over to the Fund for American Studies. They administer my scholarships. There have been 8 since then, the 9th is coming up this year.

Some of the older people who were giving have died. I had a benefit concert on February 11 and made enough money for this year.

Aneta Popiel, the winner of the 2008 scholarship came back [to the U.S.] for a Master’s Degree. I’m trying to find ways to help her pay off her debt. She can’t get a student loan as a foreign national.

I’ve asked her to help to establish a Paderewski Scholarship Alumni Association in Poland. One of the things I want to try is for the Alumni Association to sponsor programs in schools in Poland that teach about Paderewski – how he was the father of modern-day Poland, that he believed in true honesty in government, in school, in life.

Why Paderewski?

He’s the father of modern-day Poland. He’s the George Washington. In World War I, Paderewski was already famous [in the U.S.] – in 1890 he took the country by storm.

He was a great patriot and believed that one day Poland should be reunited. [Ed. note: Poland was under partition from 1795-1918.]

Paderewski with great patience and diligence and charm convinced Pres. Woodrow Wilson to put the 13th point into his 14 Points.

[After WWI], Paderewski went to Poland in 1919, stayed till 1921. His heart wasn’t in politics, he went back to the stage. Until World War II.

Paderewski went to Franklin Roosevelt. Now – he’s a sick man in 1939, but he convinced Roosevelt that the U.S. should prepare for war. The U.S. at that time was isolationist and didn’t want to go to war.

That’s my passion for Paderewski – plus the fact that he had a sterling character. Pres. Wilson called him one of the most honest men he ever met.

The General and Me: March 11, 2012, Maryland

Near the end of our conversation, the General asks about my background. This is rare for an interviewee. He gives me a copy of his book, It Takes One to Tango, and thanks me for my interest in Paderewski. He then asks if I can help him with his walker out into the living room – his health has been good, he says, but he had a fall in August.

As he settles himself into a chair, he turns to me and says, My grandmother used to say, Starość nie radość [Old age is not happiness].

I ask him, “Is that true?”

He says, “it is.” But with a smile on his face.

Imagery

1. Official portrait of Edward L. Rowny as Army lieutenant general; U.S. National Archives
2. A young I.J. Paderewski with his characteristic lion’s mane of hair; U.S. Library of Congress archives; photoprint by Arnold Genthe.

The film tells the dramatic story of Witold Pilecki, who in September 1940 accepted a mission to get himself arrested and end up in Auschwitz so that he could gather firsthand information on what was occurring there. At that time, there were few facts about the notorious death camp – just whispers. To get those facts, Polish officers chose 38-year-old, decorated cavalry captain Pilecki.

Completed in just ten days on a shoestring budget, the film made its U.S. premiere in May 2006 and has garnered critical acclaim and awards. Its star, LA-based actor Marek Probosz, who’s received not just awards but medals for his work on the film, spoke with Justine Jablonska about how playing Witold Pilecki changed his life.

Why was it important that Witold Pilecki’s story be told, and that you help tell it?

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play a hero like Witold Pilecki, one of the greatest people who ever lived.

We need heroes. We watch fictional stories with “heroes” like 007 and Iron Man. Witold Pilecki overrides them all.

He’s a true hero who lived not that long ago: the only known man in history who went to Auschwitz knowingly and stayed there for three years with the idea of creating an underground and liberating Auschwitz from the inside, letting the world know about the atrocities happening there, and bringing hope that someone cares, is doing something about the horrors of that hellish place.

To get the offer was an honor. I didn’t know that much about Pilecki. Once I read the script, I started digging into all kinds of information.

I’ve played characters who are not alive anymore. You have to imagine them. With Pilecki, you have photographs. You have paintings – he was also a painter, a poet. You have original letters. I met with his daughter.

There are certain characters that you don’t play, you have to become them. Playing Witold Pilecki, I changed on a personal level. I have a feeling I am much better man since I have played him.

I worked on the film in 2005, and in 2006 the movie premiered – not in Poland, but in Los Angeles, on Sunset Boulevard. It was sold out. People were shocked, uplifted after seeing the film.

Since the premiere, I have traveled with the movie all over the world – London, Stockholm, DC. I tell everyone about this man, his ideas, his deeds.

How were your background and family history helpful in preparing for the role of Pilecki?

I was lucky to grow up in a family with a long tradition of fighting for freedom. My grandfather Jerzy Probosz was awarded by the Academy of Polish Literature in 1938, one year before WWII started, for his poetry, essays and plays.

In 1939, he was one of the first to be arrested and taken to Dachau concentration camp in Germany. He was executed in 1942, so stories of sacrificing your life for others – I grew up with that. That wasn’t that hard to relate for me, on an emotional level.

But also, I think you have to put yourself into the people’s shoes. I went to Auschwitz, I went to Dachau. I talked to people. One of my best friends in LA was in five concentration camps. He told me many, many stories, showed me the number on his forearm.

The stories are beyond description. You feel you have an obligation to pass on that legacy. Soon, the next generation won’t know what we’re talking about – they’ll think this is another Iron Man or a made-up story.

Pilecki was a very spiritual man. That helped him a lot. Thomas à Kempis wrote a book, mentioned in our movie, about how to imitate Christ [The Imitation of Christ]. That was the book that Pilecki read and asked his wife to pass on to their kids, to teach them from this book, because this book helped him on a spiritual level. They could only kill his body. But they could not triumph over his spirit.

My grandfather, when he was taken by Nazis to the camp, he wrote a few words to his friends on a piece of paper. It’s my motto in life.

Życzę Ci serca mocy
Abyś codzien i w nocy wytrwał, wytrwał, wytrwał
Chocbyś miał ziemskie ciało w proch spalić
Musisz ducha ocalić

Be of strong heart
Endure, endure, endure each day, each night
Though your earthly body may burn to ashes
Save your soul

He wrote it while they were dragging him to the train, to the camp. It was his last outburst of freedom.

What about people who weren’t raised with a background like yours? How can they understand Pilecki’s story and the depth of his sacrifice? There’s physical anguish, but also emotional: he’s branded a traitor of Poland.

Pilecki, they killed him, but his ideas won. Poland is a free nation. His sacrifice is not for nothing. The communists tried to erase him from history, but didn’t succeed.

The director, Ryszard Bugajski, thought people wouldn’t understand it in America. When we had a screening, he was very skeptical. Not only was it a sold-out movie, but the discussion after the screening lasted a couple of hours.

The movie has been shown in Los Angeles every single year since then, at least ten times. This year, Pilecki was shown at the George Lucas Theater at USC – it was a packed audience, and this was its 11th screening – and in Orange County March 24.

The need for a true hero, an altruistic man, is always there. When you speak from the heart to the heart, it opens like it’s been struck by lightning. Your enthusiasm, passion break through a foreign language, foreign culture.

We all have the same needs. We are hungry, we love, we hate, we like to be happy, we are all searching for something to uplift us. This is this kind of story.

Even though it’s such a tragic story? Pilecki is tortured, called a traitor, killed.

Of course. Everyone around Pilecki – all his killers – is trapped. They are nervous, upset. They have their own nightmares that come from a dark place. They are not people who live in peace, who are happy.

Pilecki is happy till the end. He knows he has to say goodbye to his wife, his kids, and that’s very sad. But he says, “I had a mission and I had to do it.”

Sometimes you have to sacrifice everything you have for the future. Native American Indians live for the seventh generation to come. They treat the earth in a way the seventh generation will benefit.

Who are your audiences? Are they primarily Polish, Polish-American?

In L.A., they are American. In 2010, I was contacted by a man from NPR who put together a piece for “All Things Considered” [The Man Who Sneaked into Auschwitz]. He wrote to me later that it was the most successful program of the year. He was an American who read about Pilecki in English on the internet. There was no Pole who told him to do this.

When the movie travels around, sometimes there are Poles but other times there’s no one Polish in the audience at all.

Let’s talk about your acting in the film. There are two types of scenes – in the court and in the cell.

The hardest scene to play was when my wife is saying goodbye. Having two kids and a wife myself, it was very close to my own heart. I couldn’t stop crying in this scene. The director didn’t want me to cry there. He said Pilecki should be strong when his wife comes to him for the last time. To leave her with that strength, that his life wasn’t wasted. We had at least eight takes. Every take there was a moment where I couldn’t hold it back. So we did it again and again and again.

My metamorphosis into Pilecki was so total that a man from Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) who helped us get all the documents from Pilecki’s trial told the director, “Where did you find him? I studied Pilecki, I know him. This is Pilecki.” The director introduced me and said, “I got him from Hollywood, of course!”

It was great to hear this kind of feedback. [During filming] I was meditating as I was sitting in Pilecki’s cell in Rakowiecka [Prison]. I was deeply physically and emotionally immersed in the part. I didn’t want to make one false move when I portrayed him.

What about the court scenes? That’s a different type of challenge. He’s in front of communist officers of the new Poland who label him a traitor.

It was like playing Hamlet. Because Hamlet sticks to his plan. Pilecki knows it’s a show trial. He has his own monologue in the court, between him, a few of his colleagues who are also accused, and God, [about] the ideal he believes in: a free Poland, a free humanity, against violence and dictatorship.

I treated the court scenes almost like a prayer, like a monologue with God, while being surrounded by evil characters. How do you keep your inner soul intact? It was like being surrounded by sharks who are very hungry, and you are all alone on the waves.

Is that what Pilecki did? To keep his soul intact?

He spoke the truth. He never let anyone intimidate or shut him down. He spoke the truth until the end. That’s why his executioners were so upset that they could not break his spirit. They tortured him, they threatened his kids, his wife, they proposed that he collaborate with him. But he didn’t. He claimed his truth that he believed in, that he was taught by his parents and grandparents.

I spoke with many people who knew him, and they all said the same thing – you don’t meet people like Pilecki, just above and beyond anybody they ever met.

So in your travels and talks about Pilecki you’re really continuing his legacy.

I am. I feel like I am an ambassador of his. He changed me.

The director wrote the screenplay about Pilecki eight years prior to making this movie. For eight years no one in Poland was interested to read the script or do anything about it.

An article [was published] in Rzeczpospolita asking why we repeat fake stories in a democratic Poland like “Czterej Pancerni,” which fake our history. Why don’t we talk about true heroes like Witold Pilecki in free Poland?

[Ed. note: “Czterej Pancerni,” was a 1966-1970 Polish TV series featuring the fictionalized adventures of a Polish WWII tank crew. Filled with pro-Soviet and pro-Russian propaganda, one of its main themes was the friendship between Polish and Soviet soldiers – in reality the latter slaughtered millions of Poles, both military and civilians.]

Ryszard Bugajski read that article and wrote to the newspaper saying that for eight years now he’s had a script, he’s knocked on all the doors, and everybody said they were not interested.

The new head of Polish Television Theatre read that newspaper and found out about the Pilecki screenplay. He asked Bugajski to send him the script.

We were supposed to make the film in just six days for $100,000. Which is impossible. You can make one TV episode for that. Bugajski said, no, I’m not going to murder Pilecki again, I’m not making the movie this way. There was a big scandal and we had to postpone.

Three-four months later, the head of PTT decided to give us $250,000 and ten days. So we did it in ten days. A movie usually has 24-30 shooting days. Here we were stuck with ten. And $250,000 – which, even a TV movie is made for $1,000,000 in Poland.

But everybody who worked on this project was probably inspired by Pilecki and driven by what he’d done, and we succeeded in making this film. That’s a very important piece of the puzzle, because it wasn’t easy to deliver that baby to the world. And now that baby lives on and on.

Because it was made under the category of TV Theater, the film didn’t go to Polish film festivals – it wasn’t considered a movie. It never had a chance to go to any big, international film festivals, couldn’t be submitted as Poland’s entry for the Academy Awards.

You cannot suppress Pilecki. The story is out there, and maybe somebody somewhere will make a huge epic movie like about Gandhi. That type of hero deserves an epic movie.

What other projects are you working on?

I just finished a movie with Ryszard Bugajski, “Closed Circuit.” I played the head of the National Polish Television in it. It’s based on a true story.

I was in an ABC TV series called “Scandal.” It will be shown in April.

I’m directing “The madman and the nun” by Stanislaw Witkieiwicz at UCLA. I am also preparing to direct my second feature in the United States.

And there’s a project in Poland I was asked to direct, which will start in 2013, called “Auschwitz ’42.” It’s based on a true story about four prisoners, Poles, who escaped in the uniforms of SS officers in the car of the commander of Auschwitz. It’s the only escape from Auschwitz made this way, and it’s the only escape for which Poles were not persecuted because the headquarters in Berlin were so upset about this shame on the whole German army. Kazimierz Piechowski, who was one of the people who escaped, is still alive.

Imagery:
Still from The Death of Captain Pilecki courtesy of Marek Probosz

Direction & Screenplay: Jerzy Porebski
2011
45 minutes
Film Trailer

I’d never heard of Jerzy Kukuczka or Wanda Rutkiewicz until a few days ago. Now, I can’t stop thinking about them.

Kukuczka: second man in the world to climb all 14 8,000-meter Himalayan peaks. It took him eight years; his predecessor did it in 16.

Rutkiewicz: first Pole (yes – she beat the Polish men to it) to climb Mount Everest. First woman to climb K2. Her list of firsts – like Kukuczka’s – goes on and on.

Both climbed peaks that most of us will see only in photos or videos. They climbed them in the wintertime (because they’d already been scaled by others in good weather, and the Poles wanted new, fresh accomplishments). They climbed them without oxygen. They found and established new ascent routes. And they – and others, like Wojtek Kurtyka and Krzysztof Wielicki – did so while Poland was under heavy Soviet oppression.

How’s that for symbolism?

When I learned that Bernadette McDonald would be giving a book discussion at Georgetown University, accompanied by a viewing of a new film, “Kukuczka,” I got to work on her book, Freedom Climbers. (Read Patrice Dabrowski’s excellent review of the book in Cosmopolitan Review).

Then I scoured the internet looking for more on these intrepid Poles, finding snippets of old videos like this one from 1987, where Wanda Rutkiewicz narrates Polish climber Artur Hajzer’s outfit as he sets on a trek on Nepal’s Annanpurna Peak.

At the Georgetown event, Director Jerzy Porebski introduced his film by saying that he wanted to learn about Kukuczka and his motivations, and also to explore a philosophy – not just of climbing, but of life.

What’s golden in the 45-minute film are the interviews. Porebski interviews Jerzy Kukuczka’s wife; they chat in cozy chairs in a wooden chalet about the climber’s motivations. Reinhold Messner – the first man to climb all the world’s 8,000 m. peaks – speaks passionately about Kukuczka’s climbing abilities, every now and then running his hands through a thick mane of hair. Carlos Carsolio, nota bene the last climber to see Wanda Rutkiewicz alive, and Krzysztof Wieliczki – both extraordinary climbers, share insights. “He decided and he went,” says Messner; Carsolio agrees. Freedom Climbers author Bernadette McDonald says that Kukuczka was the best person he could be in the mountains, but the mountains also made him the best he could be.

What made Kukuczka so legendary?

Kukuczka pioneered a style now used by climbers around the world, Messner explains. And although he and Kukuczka were portrayed by the media as fierce competitors for the Crown of the Himalayas (all fourteen 8,000 meter peaks), both Messner and Kukuczka’s friends and family downplay this rivalry, saying it was media exaggeration. Kukuczka wanted to have the strongest possible experience he could on the mountains, says Messner, and that’s what he wanted to bring home, not the goal itself. That is, of course, the assessment of the victor from the comfort of looking back across decades; I wonder if Kukuczka would agree today.

There are moments of touching humanity in the film: Archival video footage shows a tall Kukuczka stirring an enormous, boiling pot, tasting a morsel with a huge spoon, then sitting cross-legged over a heaping plate.

Austrian mountaineer Kurt Diemberger was the first in the world to climb two 8,000 meter peaks: Broad Peak in 1957 and Dhaulagiri in 1960. He’s also a pioneering high-altitude filmmaker, creating the first film with synchronized sound on the peak of Mount Everest in 1978.

Clad in a colorful geometric sweater and seated against a backdrop of stacks of books and papers, Diemberger is a charming interviewee, clearly still under the mountains’ enchantment. “It’s indescribable,” he says, eyes bright, reminiscing about standing on the top of a mountain peak, “a moment caught in time.” He gestures with his hands while speaking; several of his fingers are missing their tips. He lost them and a few toes attempting to climb K2 in 1986.

The south face of Lhotse in Nepal had evaded Jerzy Kukuczka when he’d attempted its ascent in 1979. A decade later, with numerous climbing accomplishments, he went back.

His wife recollects how tired Kukuczka looked when she saw him off at the train station. We see footage of another Polish climber, Andrzej Zawada, asking Kukuczka why not end now. They’re standing in a Nepalese airport, and Kukuczka looks into the camera, circles under his eyes. “Why should I end now, when it’s going so well?” Kukuczka asks with a smile. Then his face gets very serious. “I never set a deadline for myself to finish my career. I can’t imagine quitting the mountains.”

Diemberger: “It’s such a pity he fell on Lhotse. He wanted just to…” he breaks off, searches for words – “to correct destiny.”

Earlier in the film, in an undated clip, Kukuczka speaks with the same stoicism, but seems lighter. “I very much like taking the undiscovered paths,” he says. He repeats that sentiment in his last interview, saying that he believes those kinds of paths are still out there.

Kukuczka may not be a stand alone film for audiences unfamiliar with climbing or the characters it portrays. But as a series of interviews with those closest to Kukuczka, it’s quite powerful – as are the many shots of the mountains and peaks that were the objects of desire for its characters.

One jarring note is the soundtrack, which seems ever present in the film, whether during shots of mountains or during interviews. Swelling music isn’t necessary, because what the characters say is powerful enough.

In a bonus scene on the DVD, Kukuczka’s wife describes the mountain chalet where her interview takes place: it’s the “Izba Pamięci Jerzego Kukuczki” – a place in the Beskidy Mountains he often visited to recuperate between climbs. It’s also where he finished up his two books in 1989 before leaving for his final trip.

She says that after his death, she couldn’t have imagined that one day such a place would exist. But after his death, the hut received a steady stream of visitors. They’d take photos, ask her if there was anything else they could see. And so she was inspired by their memory and need to learn more about her husband to create a small museum in his honor.

Photos:

1. The Kukuczka film cover; here’s info on purchasing the film.
2. Jerzy Kukuczka and Andrzej Czok during their spring 1980 Mount Everest expedition. On May 19, 1980, they conquered the mountain through a brand new route.
3. A street mural of Jerzy Kukuczka in Katowice, Poland, created in March 2011.

One of my first assignments in journalism school was to write a 250-word news article. We were given facts and details, and a time limit of 30 minutes. My classmates typed away while I stared at my screen. The assignment felt impossible; how was I to get my point across in so few words?

I agonized and went through a gamut of emotions from worthlessness and questioning why I was even in this classroom to defiance that 250 words weren’t going to break me, damnit! My article wasn’t very good; nor was my grade. Many other assignments followed. Eventually I learned to hyperfocus and just WRITE. And then I began thinking about the process of storytelling: What makes a compelling story and how do you tell it in a compelling way? Also: Who will you tell it to?

A good story = good characters. To whom Something Happens. Sometimes they overcome that Something; sometimes they don’t.

Obstacles make good stories. Staples, like good v. bad; self v. nature; self v. self.

And then there’s who’s listening to the story. The concept of the audience you write for is something we only delved into midway through journalism school, and I think it should have been addressed sooner, because it rocked my storytelling world. It’s easy (and simplistic) to think Kevin Costner-like: If you write it, they will come [and read]. That’s not always the case. Especially in an oversaturated world when messages come at us constantly, how does a storyteller break through so much noise to get a point across?

I think about storytelling in the context of Poland and Poland’s stories a lot, because I write about Poland and Poles often. I do it for my work, but I also do it because I feel a deep need to catalog and pass along our stories.

Our narrative is vast and expansive; it’s also complex. Poland’s geographical location caught us up in the largest storms of the 20th century but also tossed us back and forth in earlier centuries. Our WW2 history is especially complicated. The war had the most profound effect on our country in its history. Millions of our citizens were killed; hundreds of thousands were exiled. Nazi Germany built its horrific death camps and performed their horrid experiments and murders on our lands that they’d brutally occupied. There’s also the fact that so much of our intelligentsia was eradicated during WWII by Soviet Russia, because a nation without leaders and professors and thinkers is much easier to control (the communists thought). And after the war was over, we were “liberated” by Soviet Russia. For the record: It wasn’t liberation. And when I see photos of a smiling Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt sitting comfortably during the Yalta conference where the two Western leaders gave my country to Uncle Joe, I feel rage and sadness and powerlessness.

Layer onto that decades of communist repression, which systematically worked like Orwell’s infamous Ministry of Truth to eliminate so many of our stories – especially the positive ones. But a positive story finally triumphed: Solidarity, and with it – freedom and democracy.

So here we are today. Poland is free and has been for more than two decades. What now? I think that we can reflect and look back – but also look forward, taking the best from our past and creating a new and wonderful future.

But questions remain: How do we tell our stories? Could I write a 250-word story of Poland in WWII? How about 250 words on Solidarity or on Poland today? Could I ever get across all the political complexities, the shifting alliances, all the different sets of stories?

And what about audience: Who do we tell our stories to? A cycle in journalistic storytelling on the definition of newsworthiness forms a closed circle: Things are newsworthy because people have heard of them before – i.e. Starlet goes to jail. But if all we talk and report about are things that people already know, where’s the market for unknown stories? Does it exist?

I think it does and that it’s super important for us as Poles and Polish-Americans to tell our stories. But not just to ourselves. We need to get them out into the wider world. To do that, we must tell the stories in a way that is mindful of our audience. Here’s what our journalism profs taught us: Let go of the notion that every single detail is crucial. Learn how to paraphrase, consolidate, summarize and analyze. And always tell the truth.

We have such great stories to tell! Who wouldn’t be thrilled by Lech Wałęsa climbing onto the Gdańsk shipyard walls and defiantly raising his fists in a gesture that told the communists: No. Or the thrilling tales of Polish WWII pilots – among the best in the world – who fought in the Battle of Britain and greatly contributed to the Allied victory? Or Monte Cassino, the rocky hill in Italy with its ancient abbey, occupied by the Germans and army after army tried to storm it failed. And it was our soldiers who succeeded! What about our brilliant Enigma code breakers, the first in the world? And Żegota, the only secret organization in Europe set up with the sole purpose of saving Jews? And our poets? Our composers? Our artists? Our filmmakers? There are so many stories. We need them to be told and to be known in the world.

Here’s what else we need: to support each other.

There’s a very tragic joke: Satan is showing off his organizational methods, and each nationality has a specialized version of hell. The French have bland food; the Italians are forced to wear cheap, ill-fitting polyester; and so on. One group is in a large hole in the ground, but the hole is open and there are no bars. Why? Satan’s asked. Oh, says the Prince of Darkness, those are the Poles. No need for guards or bars – if anyone of them tries to climb out, the others just pull him right back down.

I hate that joke. Let’s prove Satan wrong, shall we?

Imagery:

1. A very rare, electrecord red vinyl record, photographed by Alex:D
2. An Underwood typewriter, photo by Kolossos
3. Cameras photographed by Garry Knight

I spent three years in Poland in the mid-1990s chasing a wildly romantic dream that involved making this country, which I’d left when I was a year old, my new home.

When it didn’t work, I felt heartbroken on numerous levels: the career I’d dreamed up for myself in Poland hadn’t materialized; a lovely boy who I’d met one starry night in my birthplace of Łódź was indeed lovely, just not for me. And I had no idea what to do with myself next. The defeat I felt at the time seemed insurmountable: I’d tried and failed, spectacularly.

Back in the States, I found new dreams, new happinesses. And eventually, was able to reflect on those days not as a series of defeats, but as experiences that fundamentally helped shaped my identity today: an individual able to understand the two very different nations that are both my homelands.

Last month, I traveled to Warsaw for the first time since those days.

I’d been back to Poland before, but not spent any time in Warsaw, where I’d lived, worked, and tried to make my Polish Dream happen more than a decade ago.

In my memories, Warsaw was always very gray and very cold, filled with concrete buildings, bleak skies, drafty trains, buses, rooms where one never quite got the chill out.

I used to say that I could feel all the destruction and pain of Warsaw – the city had been razed completely after horrible, bloody World War II battles where so many of Poland’s best and brightest died. The city had been rebuilt in true communist fashion: quickly, cheaply, with no thought of aesthetics or true sense of community.

My first evening in Warsaw this May, I wandered through the city for hours re-discovering places I’d walked before, and places I’d never seen.

It wasn’t a homecoming. It felt more like seeing an old friend after years and years had passed. A friend that you’d fallen out with, and didn’t think about much anymore, and didn’t remember too fondly. But then discovering that your memories don’t match who that friend is now. And also – crucially – discovering how much you yourself have changed. How much you’ve grown, learned, experienced, and how now – after all these years, you can look onto what’s in front of you right now and what happened back then and see that really, all is as it should be and should always have been.

It was dusk when I stood in front of Chopin’s monument in the Lazienki Gardens. The park, about to close, was almost empty. We stood there – Chopin and I – moody summer clouds over our heads; thinking and reminiscing and feeling – above all – at peace.

I spent the next days in Warsaw getting reacquainted with the city, and becoming enchanted by this sprawling metropolis that’s been through much.

There’s an unwritten rivalry between Warsovians and Krakovians, and I’d always sided with the latter. Krakow is easy to love. It’s gorgeous, with fantastic ancient bits and wonderful modern places; there’s a castle (with a legend of a dragon!) and cozy, underground beer and wine halls. It wasn’t destroyed during the war, and that sense of authenticity, that you’re stepping among history, is palpable.

But Warsaw – well, that grayness that I experienced in the 1990s is, of course, still there. Characterless apartment buildings – bloki – built after the war still house countless thousands. But I also experienced a new Warsaw: A green, tree-lined Warsaw; a Warsaw with beautiful outdoor Chopin concerts in the Lazienki Gardens; a Warsaw with amazing state-of-the-art museums like the 1944 Warsaw Uprising Museum and the Chopin Museum; a Warsaw where the bustling Nowy Swiat street is filled with folks of all ages day and night, who sit at outdoor cafes sipping cocktails and chatting away.

So now I have completely new memories of the city: Memories of taking a long walk with friends by the Wisla River past a huge new fountain and beautiful new gardens of the Warsaw Castle and into little neighborhoods that tourists rarely venture into but that are charming as can be; memories of a city that continues to transform itself as it moves forward; of a city that has survived.

I took thousands of photos while there; many for work, but some for me. And a specific set of photos for CR: the wondrous University of Warsaw Library with its exquisite rooftop garden, which encapsulates for me so perfectly the new Warsaw: innovative, charming, cosmopolitan. Because a stroll through the beautiful rooftop garden is a fantastic way to pause, and reflect on what was, what is, and what is yet to come. Take a look!