God of Hunger

by John Coutouvidis

  It would have hindered the allied cause had the Polish government insisted on holding out over the agreement with Russia. Sikorski's importance lay in keeping clear the path that others sought to block. He offered his fullest cooperation over the signing of the pact with Russia, within the limits he gauged to be necessary for the maintenance of fundamental Polish interests.

  By going against the strongest prejudices held by his countrymen, Sikorski showed he was not afraid of being unpopular. The agreement with Russia was more than a demonstration of Polish willingness to work for the Allied cause. It was a gesture necessary, in Sikorski's view, to obtain British commitment to support Polish interests in the new Europe that was to emerge after the war. Whatever illusions he may have had over the extent of Britain's influence over Polish fate he showed his statesmanship in appreciating his government's dependence, which inevitably characterized the Anglo-Polish alliance as it had developed, into the basis of a working relationship.”

  And it was this final point which Marisha felt should define the way ahead. Was it wishful to think that the two nations had again need of one another? Perhaps that was stretching a point, but there was a Labour Government in power which could now boost Poland’s search for détente.

  Whilst émigré Poles in Tanganyika and elsewhere hotly debated Sikorski’s place in history, Poland’s stock stood high in the world. The proposal, by Rapacki the Polish Foreign Minister in 1957 had called for a denuclearised zone in central Europe. It found wide support, especially from the left in Britain. Yet the proposal, discussed again in Geneva in the spring of 1962, was rejected by the United States. Now, seven years later, in the year which marked the thirtieth anniversary of the war precipitated by Hitler’s attack on Poland, the Polish government published a key policy review, penned by Marisha:

  “The present line of tension between NATO and the Warsaw Pact must change fundamentally towards the creation of a collective security system instead of a stand-off between two opposing, heavily armed groupings. Suspicions and prejudices, especially in the German Federal Republic, sown by almost two decades of cold war must be eradicated.

  Poland has made notable contributions to the campaign for European security.

  In all her proposals she has concentrated on broadening the area of détente. By developing and maintaining bilateral relations Polish diplomacy has placed dialogue at the top of the European security agenda. ….

  What are the specific issues which could lead to greater European security?

  The Polish proposals on disarmament, stemming from the Rapacki Plan call for a freezing of nuclear armaments and an atom free zone, still remain on the table, fully relevant to the requirements of peaceful co-existence. ….

  Now we should focus on forging a new Anglo – Polish relationship. It is economic relations which most concern the West. The opportunities for trade and co-operation between the countries of Western and Eastern Europe are far from being explored. …

  There is a real chance that Poland may once again find partnership in troubled times with Britain.’

  A good start was to lay to rest the Sikorski affair.

  By the end of her first week at the embassy, Marisha was able to send to her boss a well thought out response to Hochuth’s allegations.

  She kept to herself the thought that London Poles may well have assassinated Sikorski, despite the information Hochuth would reveal in fifty years time about Churchill’s complicity in the affair; his secret locked in a Swiss vault. She hoped to be around in 2019.

  *

  Wishing to round off her work on Sikorski, Marisha next arranged an interview with the former Polish Ambassador to the Court of St. James and Sikorski’s Foreign Minister, and figure-head of the émigré Polish community in London.

  In his eighties he retained a remarkable dignity in appearance; tall, slim, erect, elegant, benign. Aristocratic to his finger tips.

  In soft mellifluous tones he told her:

  “On 25 August the Anglo-Polish agreement was signed. It was an unholy alliance; Poland and Britain found themselves thrown together in the special circumstances of the diplomatic prelude to the war. Nothing but fear of Hitler brought the two together. Their alliance was an attempt to play for time in the hope that they would deter Hitler from further use of force in the conduct of German foreign policy. It is only with hindsight one can say that this reasoning was wrong. It would have been better to prepare to fight the war than attempt to delay it.

  On 29 August the German chancellor delivered his ultimatum to Poland. He repeated the demands he had made after Munich. A familiar scene was being acted out but this time Hitler's victim did not capitulate under diplomatic pressure. Negotiations between the two governments broke down on 31 August 1939.

  In the early hours of the next day Germany invaded Poland.

  On 17 September, when the relentless onslaught of the German forces had swept the government to Kuty, Poland was invaded by the Soviet army, which occupied the area agreed to in the secret protocol to the Nazi-Soviet pact. … Molotov as Soviet foreign commissar justified the Soviet action by saying that the Polish government had 'disintegrated' and had, in fact, 'ceased to exist', leaving Poland 'a suitable field for all manners of hazards and surprises, which may constitute a threat to the USSR.' ….

  ‘The government went into exile and in London my first talk with Sikorski was to convince him that we must find some activity for the Polish troops in this country, this will help to maintain the morale of the Poles in Poland.’

  Marisha responded with, ‘The fact that Poles had a Government at Claridges did not achieve the desired effect … the Polish Army only consists of 16,000 men in England and 6,000 in Egypt…...’

  The Count changed his tone in asking why Marisha was belittling Polish arms. The pilots and crew of the Battle of Britain whose kill ratio was twice that of the British? The naval heroes of the submarine, Orzel (Eagle)? The bravehearts of Narvik, Tobruk, El Alamein, of Monte Cassino?

  ‘Why then’, she asked, ‘did the British not allow them a place in the victory parade? ‘And why did you fail to get Churchill to acknowledge Stalin’s guilt over Katyn and his own over Teheran and Yalta? The Alliance with Britain was a hollow sham. After all you wrote in your memoirs that it was a reversal of alliances.”

  The Count stood up from his chair.

  “The expression used by me, reversal of alliances, is, I am afraid, used if not wrongly at least without sufficient precision.

  Beck’s attempt of steering Poland on a middle course between passive obedience to our French ally and allegiance to Germany had already in 1938 become almost impossible. What happened in March and the first days of April 1939, was not the reversal of alliances but the end of a system of checks and balances which had become inoperative.

  We had no alliance with Germany and we had rejected several suggestions of the Hitler empire to join forces against Soviet Russia. Beck’s policy was inspired in every respect by the Pilsudski tradition of maximum independence and national pride. Beck did at no time show servility to the Third Reich. He stood up for Poland and its interest until the very end.”

  Marisha had recorded a scoop.

  Next she said:

  “In November 1943 Eden, soon to depart for Teheran with Churchill, was officially told not to make, at Poland’s expense, any territorial concessions to the Soviets. Significantly quite a different case was made informally by you, Sir. When you handed your memorandum to Eden you are reported as allowing the British delegation room for manoeuvre.

  In your words, Sir, ‘if, however, Poland’s friends were to tell the Government that they must accept such and such a settlement to safeguard the future of Poland, this would create a new situation.’

  How different was your response to that of Benes before Munich? What of Poland’s much vaunted courage; her reputation as the one state never to bow to force majeur?’

  The poor Count crumpled and was helped out of the room by his consort who
asked Marisha to depart.

  *

  Her next subject was Professor Tsosnik. He was the communist republic’s pre-eminent historian of Poland in the twentieth century and the host of choice in Warsaw for visiting academics. Not only did he have knowledge of and access to official archives which allowed him to make copies of sought after papers selectively available to visitors, he also was a mine of information about life behind the iron curtain. And a great raconteur. He spoke to her about his recent visit to the Far East.

  There was, he told her, only one way to travel across the vastness of the Soviet Union. By train, taking with him four kilos of beluga and a case of vodka and having direct access to the dining car refrigerator; a long journey of gastronomic luxury.

  Not so in Beijing. Shaking off his minder the Professor sought out a Chinese restaurant in which the natives of the city dined. He found one such establishment, entered unannounced and found himself before a blackboard menu listing a vast choice of dishes in a language of which he had no knowledge. A waiter waited to take his order. The guest pointed at random to six mysterious Chinese characters. The waiter looked most surprised and when he loudly relayed the order to the kitchens, the entire establishment fell silent. The westerner had asked for six soups. Unfazed, he imbibed each with gusto and raised his head to a sea of delighted faces.

  Here was a true bon vivant.

  The great man of Polish letters. Here was a hero amongst academics in the West who thought him a hapless victim of blanket state censorship.

  Ignoring the fact that the authorities in Poland rarely deprived any writer of the freedom of expression, Tsosnik’s magisterial biography of Pilsudski had just emerged after years of internment by the censor. Little wonder. His subject was the foremost Polish statesman of independent of the Second Republic, 1918-1939. As one of the founders of the independent Polish State, Pilsudski’s policy involved the use of armed force; in his opinion the only measure of a nation’s strength. He regarded Russia as Poland’s worst enemy. His Legions became the Polish army which defeated the Red Army in the war of 1919-1920.

  Clearly his subject could give offence to the Kremlin and indeed to the party in Warsaw and therefore it had to be censored.

  ‘How have you survived such censure? Are you a Party member?’

  Tsosnik looked at his watch. ‘Ah. My apologies. I have an appointment at the School of Slavonic Studies. Perhaps we may continue later?’

  The curtailed interview was never resumed.

  *

  Next on her schedule was Czeslaw Milosz.

  She knew little of his literary output until her trip to Africa with Jozef when she took some of Milosz’s work with her and memorised his ‘After Travelling’, quoting his words to herself:

  ‘How strange life is! How incomprehensible! As if I returned from it as from a long journey and tried to remember where I had been and what I had done. I can’t manage it, and the most difficult part is trying to see myself there. I had intentions, motivations. I made decisions, performed acts. Yet from here that man seems so irrational and absurd.

 

  As if he did not act, but was activated by forces that made use of him.

  So opaque to myself, I want to guess who I was for others, especially the women to whom I was bound by ties of love or friendship. Too late.

  We are like a marionette theatre that has been put to sleep. The puppets lie in the tangle of their strings and convey no idea of what the spectacle was like.’

  As if he did not act, but was activated by forces that made use of him.’

  *

  The line kept emerging more and more in her mind as she went about her work. Perhaps it was the apparent freedom of life led in Britain that made her anxious about herself. But then she had never felt constrained in Poland nor as a Polish official outside the Kraj. (Country; Motherland.) Debating the future of Poland had made her think again about many other things.

  How strange that the dialectics of the debate she now conducted with herself, within her self, trumped the philosophical dialectics she had been taught to memorise.

  Was she simply living a life at the behest of others? Simply waiting? Simply allowing fate full play with her life? What was that fragment of a line again?

  ‘… simply waited for fate to overtake us.’

  ‘No,’ she said to herself.

  She did not want to just be remembered as the once active marionette to be wheeled out by the Embassy at celebratory occasions.

  *

  A few months before the visit to London of Czeslaw Milosz she was asked to visit the new Ambulatorium at The Polish Home in Penrhos; North Wales.

  There she met elderly women and men who had suffered and survived every imaginable and unimaginable horror from Auschwitz to Vladivostok.

  One such person, Bogumila (whose name, Bogoomeewa, translates as Beloved of God) interested her most of all. She sought her out especially because she had been mentioned in a book recently published in a new edition.

  Marisha recorded the interview, first asking permission.

  ‘… Well. … But what for. … I am nobody.’

  ‘On the contrary, Mrs.W. You are a contributor to a book called The Dark Side of the Moon; about the fate of Poles taken into Soviet exile in 1940. Please give me your opinion of the book as a record of your experience. You did agree to read it afresh. Do you mind if I record our interview?

  ‘Yes. … The book? Ah. I will tell you about it. Yes. You can record. … First of all, you must understand that for time to heal the wounds in a person’s psyche, it must blunt memories of the experiences that have been lived through. But it is sometimes possible to come across material which may help to brush aside the cobwebs of forgetfulness. …

  Reading the book again at your request after so many years have passed since my Soviet exile does have this effect; every distant experience now emerges alive and real. The cause of this reaction, in my view, is the manner in which the book is drafted, facts being presented with penetrating clarity and accuracy, put together with correct and cogent assessment of the contemporary situation. Its general drift must astound every reader! Especially those who experienced this chapter of Poland’s history. This book is frightening in its realism!

  It also helps to restore the balance between the countless books recounting the martyrology of the Nazi policies in Poland and the very few describing the Soviet occupation of Poland and its similarly hellish consequences.’

  Marisha took a deep breath.

  ‘I am sorry Mrs. W. but I must pause in order to sort out in my own mind what you have just said. Because there’s a question that never goes away.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Is there, …. Please forgive me. I want to check that we are recording again, yes, good. My question to you: is there really equivalence between any other human catastrophe and the Holocaust.?’

  “I too have had time to think long and hard about the same question. You know, my son put this question to Milosz when he met him in the Polish library on his visit to London in, I think, 1985. Yes. March. Milosz re-affirmed his opinion that although their systems differed, no distinction could be made between the Germans and Russians as occupants of Poland.’

  Silence of a few seconds ‘… not agree.’

  ‘Please repeat that again. I caught a malfunction on my earphones.’

  “Oh. I said that I am hardly in a position to know as I never encountered a German in my part of Poland. But from what I know. From what we all know, there is no equivalence.”

  “You mean the Russians were worse?”

  ‘No. No. There were tens of thousands of Catholic Poles at Auschwitz. And hundreds of thousands of Jewish Poles. There are some ladies, Jew and Catholic, here, at Penrhos, who survived. You must speak to them. By their accounts I know that there was but one true hell on earth; all other suffering was less in comparison. Just think … just isolate the fate of Jews from all else, put them in a ghetto, starve them,
sicken them, work them to death - there is equivalence. But put them on trains waiting at stations throughout occupied Europe, destination Auschwitz, where you order them to strip naked in order to gas them in what they were told were shower rooms and then burn them in specially constructed facilities … there is no comparison. Dante would have agreed. There is nothing like it in the whole of human experience. Nor in hell itself.”