David Trawinski's Blog, page 4

Tadeusz Kosciuszko

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Many Americans think of Casmir Pulaski when they think of the American Revolution. And rightly so, as Pulaski was the father of American Calvary, besides having given his life in the defense of Savannah.

There was, of course, another great Pole who contributed to our heritage during the Revolutionary War, and his birthday was February 4th. Tadeusz Kosciusko was a military engineer and leader who contributed to both the fortifications of West Point, NY and the establishment of American artillery.

After the Revolutionary War, Kosciuszko returned to Poland. In 1794, he led an uprising against the combined Prussian and Russian forces for their harsh rule of formerly Polish lands grabbed under the first two partitions of Poland in 1772 and 1793. Fighting an uprising with many armed with nothing more than harvesting scythes, Kosciuszko enflamed the imagination and hearts of his countrymen.

Tadeusz Kosciuszko above all else believed in equality. He was vocal against the treatment of Black slaves and the indigenous peoples of North America. However, his actions spoke even louder than his words. Upon his return to Poland, Kosciuszko freed all the serfs slaved to his lands.

A statue of Tadeusz Kosciuszko stands in LaFayette Square opposite the White House.

Solidarity

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Twenty-eight years ago today, the communist party transitioned from the ruling party of Poland to an opposition party to Solidarity. What Lech Walesa and the people of Poland did was historically unprecedented – shaking off the shackles of Soviet imperialism.

The social movement in Poland was more than only an accomplishment. The Solidarity movement, dating back to the 1980 strikes in the Lenin Shipyards in Gdańsk, motivated the rest of the countries behind the Iron Curtain to actively resist Soviet domination. Soon after the historic elections in Poland of August 1989, the first cracks appeared in the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989).  Just over two years later, the Soviet Union was dissolved on Christmas Day, 1991. How appropriate for an empire that denied its citizens their rights to worship their God.

Poland has a long history of determined social resistance. With uprisings led by Tadeusz Kościuszko in 1794, under Napoleon in 1810, the November Uprising of 1830, the Kraków Uprising of February 1846, and the January Uprising of 1863.

The spirit of Poland is to keep its culture alive. And free. Happy 28th to the free Republic of Poland!

Wesołych Świąt

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas (Wesołych Świąt) and Happy New Year (Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku)!

I am writing this on Christmas Eve 2017.  Christmas Eve is a very special day in the Polish celebration of Christmas.  After fasting for most of the day, a family dinner is held after the sighting of the first star. This is symbolic of the original viewing of the Star of Bethlehem

The family meal on Christmas Eve is known as the Wigilia, or Christmas Eve vigil.  It is traditional to place an extra place setting for “the unexpected guest”, and the family considers it an honor if someone stops in to feast with them.  Before the beginning of the meal comes the breaking of the opłatek, an unleavened wafer often rectangular in shape embossed with a Christmas image. The opłatek is usually broken by the eldest member of the family, and then passed to other family members.

This meal itself is a celebratory feast.  By tradition, no meat is served, and the meal features a fish entree, usually carp. This meal is perhaps the most important meal of the year in the Polish culture. It celebrates the coming of Our Lord, Jesus Christ and the strong bonds of the Polish family.

I hope you all enjoy your holidays.  Remember the tradition of gifts is in honor of The Greatest Gift Given to Mankind – The Birth of the Infant Jesus.

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November – A Month of Rememberances

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Thanksgiving, Armistice Day, Rememberance Day, and Veteran’s Day – the month of November is all about Rememberance.  We give thanks for those still with us,  we remember our fallen, and we reassess our priorities.

At the end of World War I, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, an independent Poland was restored as the 13th of Woodrow Wilson’s famous 14 points.  After 123 years since one of Europe’s greatest sins, the three partitions of Poland of 1772, 1793 and 1795, robbed a historically sovereign people of its country and attempted to eliminate its language, culture and history. So in Poland, November 11th is celebrated as Independence Day, honoring the return of their country with the end of “The War to End All Wars”. War never precludes war,  as the Poles and the rest of the world would be traumatically reminded, on September 1, 1939.

An amazing thing happened during those 123 years that Poland was sliced up by Russia, Prussia, and Austria.  The culture of Poland flourished. It lived in the hearts and homes of the Polish people.  As the German speaking people attempted to “Germanize” them, as the Russians attempted to “Russify” them, the outlawed Polish language spilled forth from this proud people.  Is it any surprise that today the literacy rate in Poland is among the highest on Earth at 99.7%.  This is the result of a people who had to fight for their language, their culture and their country!  These are reflected in the national anthem of Poland, Mazurek Dabrowskiego, which begins “Poland has not yet perished, so long as we still live”.

Witamy! Welcome to my writer’s blog

Witamy! is the Polish word for Welcome!

[image error](Above: Town Square, or Rynek, of Bolesławiec, world renown for its beautiful Polish pottery. This is a setting for a scene in my second book, Chasing The Winter’s Wind.)

So, Welcome! to my writer’s blog.  I have now published two novels telling the story of the aspirations and tribulations of my character Stanley Wisniewski.  At the opening of my first novel – The Willow’s Bend – Stanley is a 70-year-old retiree of the CIA.  He is called in by a defense firm, with whom he has worked previously in his days as an agent, to uncover the truth about the death of one of their executives.  So, the stories take off from there, not just in the modern day murder investigation, but in Stanley’s past, which is slowly revealed in this novel, and its prequel/sequel – Chasing The Winter’s Wind.

Why do I write at all?  Writing novels ties together my love of history, travel, and storytelling.  Like Stanley, I am retired from a long career. My own area of specialization has been in the Defense and Aeronautics industries.  Between my career and my personal travels, I have wandered across the globe and visited many countries and cultures.  It was after my first vacation to Poland, visiting Warsaw, Kraków, and Oświęcim that I came up with the basic story for The Willow’s Bend.

Oświęcim, as many of you likely know, is the Polish name of the town that the Nazi’s called Auschwitz.  The Nazi death camps of Auschwitz I and Birkenau (Auschwitz II) represent the darkest aspects of human nature.  I am an avid reader of the author Joseph Conrad, and his classic tome, Heart of Darkness, highlights the depths that souls can sink to after the moral constraints of society are abandoned.  I find it ironic, that Conrad, Polish by birth, seemingly predicts the very curse of  National Socialism that was to tear Europe and the world apart in World War II. The curse of the Nazi’s aggression would not only begin that war on Polish soil at Westerplatte (outside Gdańsk) but also bear its darkest stain at the death camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka and other sites.

The more redemptive side of the humanity in this period has also been movingly depicted in literature and cinema of those who risked everything to save precious human lives.  In my second book, Stanley meets and recruits the beautiful Agnieszka Danuska, who he calls his Sarenka (Polish for fawn).  In the history of the Second World War, the real Sarenka was a magnificent young Polish Jewish woman named Rachela Zylberberg, who intentionally allowed herself to be interned in the Warsaw Ghetto. She wanted to assure word of the Nazi atrocities to Jews that she personally had witnessed was reaching this community.  In 1943, she played a critical role in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising that would claim her life.  Rachel was only 23-years-old and gave her vibrant existence fighting the evil of her time. She left behind her own 2-year-old daughter, Maya.

I am a firm believer that throughout history there has been an ongoing battle between good and evil. I attempt not only to capture these conflicts in my story-lines but also to highlight the historical facts that frame them.  The Willow’s Bend has a very dominant historical theme of the terror of World War II, as Stanley recalls the story of his father surviving Auschwitz,  as well as the 1944 Polish Uprising in Warsaw.  In Chasing The Winter’s Wind, the historical themes revisit World War II in the telling of the massacre by Stalin in 1940 of 22,000 Polish Army Officers in the forests at Katyń, as well as the Soviet suppression of Poland during the Cold War. The tale is told of the 1980 strikes in the shipyards of Gdańsk that formed Solidarność  (The Solidarity Trade Union and later Social Movement), which eventually imploded the USSR itself.

I am currently writing my third novel, entitled  War of The Nocturne’s Widow.  As Chasing The Winter’s Wind picked up at the end of The Willow’s Bend, so War of The Nocturne’s Widow continues the tale of  Winter’s Wind. As the sparks of freedom chiseled from the Communist State by Solidarność in Poland ignites the Soviet satellite states,  including the incredibly repressive Stasi secret police of East Germany.

If you picked up a theme in my titles, it is, of course, that of Frédéric Chopin.  The Willow’s Bend is, of course, a reference to the cover image of the monument of Chopin under the willow tree in Warsaw’s Łazienki Park.  With this tree being the iconic image of the Polish culture’s resilience, I could not resist.  Chasing The Winter’s Wind is a play on Chopin’s Etude Opus 25 no. 11 in A minor, known commonly as Winter Wind. Again I could not resist, as Stanley is chased across Europe by the CIA through the deepening days of fall leading to winter.  War of The Nocturne’s Widow follow’s as the conclusion of my “Chopin Trilogy”.

Why so much emphasis on Chopin?  Is it because his music captures the essence of the Polish soul?  That his longing for his native Poland from his exile in France translates to the tenderness and expressiveness of his music?  Is it because of the tragedy of his life cut short by heartbreak and disease?

Yes to all the above. More simply, it is the music I listen to when I write…

 

David Trawinski

October 23, 2017