By Zbyszek Koreywo
http://koreywo.cjb.net

Translated from Polish by Mark Matyszewski
Notes added by Mark Matyszewski

Quote: Part I.

Zbyszek Koreywo (ZK): Where and when was today Ph.D. in History, Dariusz Ratajczak, born ?

Dariusz Ratajczak (DR): I was born in Opole, on November 28, 1962, but, just like a considerable majority of the inhabitants of this city, I am not a native Silesian.

ZK : Who were your parents ? What did they do ?

DR : My father, Cyryl Ratajczak (b.1928) comes from Wielkopolska. (1) By the way, the name Ratajczak is typical of that region of Poland. My father, the son of Michal Ratajczak, a Wielkopolska insurgent (2) and volunteer in the Polish-Soviet war, was born in Srem (40 km south of Poznan). My grandfather Michal, a clerk in the local Health Fund,(3) and local party activist (from 1937, he belonged to the Christian-Democratic Labor Movement) (4) ensured a good, comfortable childhood to my father and his brothers. They were a solid and hard-working petit bourgeoisie Wielkopolska family. In 1940, my father, then a 12-year-old, was deported by the Germans for forced labor. Actually, he worked for the German "bauers" throughout the whole war. After his return to Srem, he, along with his father, became active in the Polish People's Movement; (5) he paid for it with a month long arrest in 1947. By the way, he shared the cell with his father. A year later, with a new first name (Cyryl was replaced with Antoni), he began studies at the Faculty of Law of Poznan University. After completion of studies and practicum, he came to Opole, where he started working on a legal team. My father, today retired, was an outstanding lawyer, of an acknowledged reputation in the Polish legal profession. He defended, among others, one of the Kowalczyk brothers, accused of blowing up the assembly hall in the School of Pedagogy in Opole.(6) He took part in the political trials during martial law.(7) Also, he was active in the domain of sport, as a soccer referee. My late mother, Alina (her maiden name was Czuchryj), came from the Eastern Borderlands of the Polish Commonwealth. She was born in Chodorow (the eastern periphery of the Lwow district) to an "oil" family. Until the outbreak of war, her father, Stanislaw Czuchryj, worked in Polmin, a purely Polish oil company in the city of Boryslaw. This saved him from deportation to Siberia. The Russians were not so stupid as to get rid of a professional in the field. After the war, my mother's family, following the trail of hundreds of thousands of Poles, arrived in the Western Territories. (8) There my mother met my father; I and my sister are the result of it. Undoubtedly, the historic experiences of my family, on both the sword and distaff side, had influence on my interest in history. I was in a privileged position, however, because I could fetch information from representatives of two different traditions: the Wielkopolska tradition, and the Eastern Borderlands one. Initially, the latter had a greater appeal to my imagination, and that was thanks to my mother, who made me aware that the Russians had stolen the Borderlands from us. To me, an 8- or 9-year-old boy, it was an incredible shock, the more so that, in the elementary school, the teacher tried to confirm us in the belief that the USSR was our greatest friend. Besides, my grandpa and grandma repeated constantly to me that in the East soil was fertile, tomatoes the size of small pumpkins. This appealed to the child. Simply, I started disliking those who had stolen the tomatoes from us, and I automatically carried over this dislike of the Soviets to the local communists. Also, I was lucky that during school holidays my father often took me to watch court proceedings. We would drive throughout the whole country, and he would tell me about grandpa Michal, the Bolshevik war, (9) and his own imprisonment. Actually, I was lost to People's Poland right from the beginning. I did not join the scouts, (10) nor the Polish-Soviet Friendship Association. Entering high school in Opole, I already knew that history was going to interest me above all. I was by far the best historian and geographer in class; I took part, as one of two representatives of the Opole district, in the Central Historic Olympic Games in Warsaw. This enabled me to enter university without preliminary exams. I chose the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, first, because I wanted to make my father happy, and, second, because my Opole colleagues would choose the nearby Wroclaw. But I did not want to study at a varsity denoted by the cryptonym B.B. Alas, this did not signify Brigitte Bardot, only Boleslaw Bierut.(11) I do not regret that decision. I had truly outstanding professors and capital colleagues. Without doubt, the strikes in November-December 1981 hardened and united us. We, fledgling students, had just begun studying, when - there you've got it, right away a strike. And so we striked on to 13 December, when the ZOMO (12) asked us, by the way, politely, to leave the building. Later on - brisk learning, illegal transport and distribution of books, active social life, return to Opole, and, from 1988 on, working in the Opole higher education institution.

ZK : Where are the seeds of historical truth sown ? Can society function without the knowledge of the past ?

DR : As I have already mentioned, history has surrounded me at all times. I think, however, that most important is the family milieu, where a man develops his moral, patriotic, and, partially, ideological backbone. Thank God, I was raised in an ordinary Polish home. Today it is not as obvious any more. At present, the majority of young people leave the family home without the baggage of the past, without grandparents' and parents' stories about times past. At best, those are babblings, such as "in Gierek's time (13) it was so good". Schools at every level of education complete the work of destruction. Although the cretinous Marxists are already gone, they have been adequately replaced with empty-headed, politically correct idiots, who are as numerous in Poland as in Australia. Stupidity is not picky about continents, it seems. It is they, those good-for-nothing historians, who finish off history, which in their version ceases to be the carrier of truth, the mistress of life, the reason for national pride. It is they who, deliberately, convert history into a handmaid of current political interests of equally morally and intellectually cheap ruling elites. Finally, it is they who decide which fact or historical figure to make prominent, and about which to keep silent to the death. Of course, they do it from the angle of current political usefulness. That is why young people know nothing about Dmowski (14) (because he is an ultra-patriot, and we are moving toward the post-Freemason hybrid called the European Union), Witos (15) (because he defended Polish land, and in the European Union land can be transferred to foreign hands), the Silesian Risings (16) (because it is Polish nationalism, and Upper Silesia ought to be the place of Polish-German cooperation), the Poznan June of 1956 (17) (because Jacek Kuron (18) et consortes were not there, and the authorities shot only at anonymous Poles), the murder of Bogdan Piasecki (19) (because Jews committed the murder, so it is not proper to speak about it), et cetera. Instead, the Kielce pogrom, (20) the March events, (21) and the Gehenna of the Trockists from the KOR are rattled on about from A to Z, and, in addition, over all this the Holocaust Industry is watching, and talking with the teachers' mouths into young people our alleged offenses against the Jews. Everywhere half-truths, lies, propaganda. But it is not at all madness, but a method leading to the destruction of historical consciousness, to the cutting off from the truly Polish historical heritage, without which the nation cannot exist. A nation is, after all, past, present, and future generations. If we break the first element of the triad, the whole starts making no sense. And that is where the "creativity" of the politically correct correctors of history is leading.

ZK : What were the circumstances of your first contact with dangerous history ?

DR : First of all, I must explain that I am a historian and publicist dealing mainly with most recent history of Poland, so I encounter history, or dangerous topics, very frequently. But it is not I who invent them, nor decide whether they are dangerous or not. It is "social demand", the obligatory trend, etc., that decide about it, unfortunately. My non-reformability, however, is based on the fact that, unlike others, I am completely not interested in those trends and fashions. If there is an uninvestigated historical fact, I investigate it, whether somebody likes it, or not. If there is a problem which requires at least reporting about, or expounding, I report about and expound it. Regardless of whether they accuse me, for instance, of breaking the law. Because of this, I am an easy target for attacks. Such is the lot of a man not caring about censorship (the communist one before, and the politically correct one today). Good God, I didn't become a historian to write between lines. But to answer your question directly. Well, in 1986, I defended in Poznan my Master's thesis entitled "The Poles in the Wilno District 1939-1944" (later on, after additions, I published it in the book form). One of the chapters dealt with the struggles of the Wilno and Nowogrod Home Army (22) units with Soviet partisans. Having read the work, my mentor, the late professor Ochmanski, a well-known expert on history of Lithuania (a disciple of the great Henryk Lowmianski), but also a "cement communist", who sat on verification committees during martial law, blushed, then kicked me out, with a note: "Change, or no Master's". I came back a week later, to hear at the door: "Have you changed it ?" "Yes, I have." The joke was that I had added a sentence that it was the Soviet units that provoked skirmishes with the Home Army. Ochmanski trusted my word; he did not even glance at the text.

ZK: What should a historian's role be ? What is the sine qua non condition for practicing history ?

DR : A historian has one basic role to perform. It is to reach the truth. In essence, truth is a historian's only friend. A historian ought to know that truth has no hues; truth is always clear, and one. Striving after truth, a historian should avoid like fire "friendly" whispers, such as "any coin has two sides", "the golden mean", "make a compromise", etc., because they lead him astray, get him closer to lying. After ascertaining the truth and here we are touching a historian's other role the investigator should share the truth with others, regardless of the consequences. After all, truth must have not only an individual dimension, but also a social one. Writing, but not for publication, makes no sense, especially in times when lies attack us from every side. It is a waste of time. The other part of your question pertains, in my opinion, to traits which should characterize a historian, because the sine qua non condition for practicing history, that is, freedom of speech, is already a past memory. It has been replaced with political correctness, that is, soc-liberal censorship, or, as somebody has nicely put it, a "tyranny of good intentions". Thus in today grim times the sine qua non condition for practicing history is the historian himself truthful, independent, immune to punches, and, finally, simply courageous. Yes, we have lived to see times when, jokingly speaking (but it is a bitter joke), a historian should be a cross between an intellectual and a boxer.

ZK : Where, when, and in what circumstances did first troubles start ? Was it in an educational institution, or did it take place outside university walls ? Who put the initial pressure on you ?

DR : To answer your question requires bringing up numerous details, including the names of my "worthy harassers". I would not mind if servility, lying, and I do not hesitate to use this expression - common boorishness, so typical of our political elites and many scientific workers, saw the light of the day. In 1988, I started working in an Opole learning institution, then called the Silesian Insurrectionists School of Pedagogy; in 1995, it became Opole University, but without the Silesian Insurrectionists, which was a graceful gesture toward the so-called German minority, growing in strength in Opole Silesia. I found a situation there which I would define as a "transformation". It meant that professors, assistant professors, and so on, were shedding off their PZPR (23) robes, hiding away in the drawers some more disgracing fruits of their up-to-then creativity (all those books commemorating the Soviet October Revolution, and the like), in order to turn into "genuine" democrats. They were authentically frightened that some gigantic inspection was going to take place any moment and deprive them of their high positions. It was only Prime Minister Mazowiecki and his "thick line" that soothed them. Perhaps because of this, later, many of them took a liking to the Freedom Union ? (24) From red to pink only one step. At that period I buried myself completely in the didactic work. At several departments (including evening classes), I was in charge of courses on most recent history of Poland and Europe, and, besides, I set in motion a historic circle, which once a week grouped students who tried to "remove white stains in history". Katyn, the USSR and the Warsaw Rising, (25) Operation "Tempest" in the Eastern Borderlands, (26) the National Armed Forces, (27) the pro-independence underground after 1944, were among the topics of our interest. Although all this was taking place before the finale of the Round Table, (28) that is, with censorship still in force, the academic top brass, as I have said already, were not so dumb as not to sense "the wind of change", so, in effect, we were left alone. In the first half of the 1990s I had already an established position in the university. I won't be bragging when I say that during my classes the classroom was always full. It was nice to hear from the students that I was considered a reliable historian and excellent speaker (this wasn't particularly my own achievement, but that of genes inherited from my father, a lawyer), who was not afraid to take up topics that were dangerous from the viewpoint of political correctness, which was pouring, at first unnoticeably, and then like a waterfall, inside the university walls. And, of course, I was standing up to it in plain sight, feeling intuitively that we were facing the danger of replacing communist censorship with its soc-liberal equivalent. What is more, I anticipated that the result of the victorious invasion of political correctness would be a slavish subjugation of the science of history to politics. There has never been my consent to this. ... ...

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Notes:

1. Greater Poland, Posnania. An area in western and central Poland, drained by the Warta, Odra, and Wisla. Its main city is Poznan.

2. The Poznan Rising. A military action of the Wielkopolska Polish population against the German authorities, launched on 27 December 1918, and settled by the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919.

3. Kasa Chorych. In 1920-34, a self-governing institution providing sick leave benefits to the insured and their families.

4. Stronnictwo Pracy.

5. Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe. A political party formed in 1945 (it ceased to exist in 1949). Its leader was Deputy Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk. In opposition to the communist authorities, it advocated, among others, strong self-government and independent family farms. The communists used repressive measures against its members.

6. In October 1971.

7. Declared on 13 December 1981 by the communist authorities under General Jaruzelski to suppress the Solidarity Trade Union. Suspended on 31 December 1982; lifted on 22 July 1983.

8. Ziemie Zachodnie. A former German territory, ceased to Poland by the Allied Powers during the Potsdam Conference in July-August 1945.

9. Fought in 1919-21; concluded on 18 March 1921 in Riga with a peace treaty, which defined the border between Poland and Bolshevik Russia.

10. Zwiazek Harcerstwa Polskiego, ZHP (Association of Polish Scouts). The communist version, created in 1956, of an association, founded in 1918. Harcerz, in Polish: scout.

11. Boleslaw Bierut (1892-1956). President in 1947-56; general secretary of the United Polish Workers' Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR) in 1948; 1st secretary of its Central Committee in 1954-56. An NKVD agent; one of the leading Stalinist figures in Poland, directly responsible for numerous crimes of the secret police apparatus.

12. Zmotoryzowane Odwody Milicji Obywatelskiej (Motorized Reserve Units of Citizen Militia). A police group, whose role was to keep order during turbulent events, such as natural catastrophes. During martial law in 1981-82, the ZOMO were used to disperse demonstrations and break strikes. Notorious for ruthlessness and brutality.

13. Edward Gierek (1913-2001). 1st Secretary of the PZPR in 1970-80. His reign was considered more liberal and pro-West than that of his predecessor, Wladyslaw Gomulka.

14. Roman Dmowski (1864-1939). Politician and publicist. Co-founder and leader of the Narodowa Demokracja (National Democracy), a.k.a. the Endecja, a right-wing, national movement. Led the Polish delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. "[P]robably the single most significant figure in modern Polish politics" (Norman Davies). Opponent of Jozef Pilsudski and the Sanacja.

15. Wincenty Witos (1874-1945). Politician, farmer leader, publicist; deputy from Galicia (the Austrian Partition) to the imperial Reichsrat in Vienna in 1911-18.

16. Three risings (1919, 1920, and 1921) of the Polish population in Upper Silesia against the German authorities.

17. Poznanski Czerwiec 1956. A general strike and street demonstrations of the workers of the Cegielski Metal Factory in Poznan. On 28-29 June 1956, ca 100,000 people demonstrated under the slogan "Bread and freedom." During the pacification by the units of the Polish army and security apparatus tens of workers were killed.

18. Jacek Kuron (b. 1934). Politician and publicist. One of the leading figures of the anti-communist opposition in Poland, co-founder in 1976 of the Committee for the Defense of Workers (Komitet Obrony Robotnikow, KOR). In 1956, he belonged to PZPR (expelled in 1964).

19. Sixteen-year-old son of Boleslaw Piasecki (1915-79), right-wing politician and publicist. In January 1957, Bogdan Piasecki was abducted and murdered by "unknown perpetrators." His body was badly mutilated.

20. On 4 July 1946 in Kielce (central Poland). In accordance with the official version, 39 Jews were killed by an angry crowd, as a result of a hearsay that Jews had committed a ritual murder on a 9-year-old boy.

21. The widespread student protests, on 8-11 March 1968, against the communist authorities' harassment of students who had taken part in an anti-censorship demonstration. The subsequent political crisis, including an "anti-Zionist" campaign inspired by the authorities, resulted, among others, in emigration from People’s Poland of ca 20,000 persons of Jewish extraction.

22. Armia Krajowa (AK). During WWII, the biggest and strongest Polish underground resistance organization, operating in the pre-war Polish territory.

23. Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (The Polish United Workers' Party). A communist party, founded in 1948 through the enforced merger of the Polish Socialist Party with the Polish Workers' Party. The former, founded in 1892, fought the Tsarist rule in the Russian Partition; the latter, founded in 1942, was Soviet-sponsored. The PZPR was the ruling party of People's Poland, loyal to the Soviet Union. Dissolved on 27 January 1990.

24. A political party, of liberal, conservative-liberal, and Christian profile, founded in 1994. Tadeusz Mazowiecki was its leader from 1995 to 2000. In 1989, as Premier, in a speech to the Sejm (Polish Parliament), Mazowiecki declared: "We are marking off the [communist] past with a thick line".

25. Launched by the Home Army on 1 August 1944 against the German garrison in Warsaw. The Soviets refused assistance to the insurgents.

26. Akcja "Burza". The military activities, including sabotage, of the Home Army at the rear of the German Army, begun in March 1944 in Volhynia. At times, the Polish units fought arm-in-arm with the Soviet partisans and the Red Army. After the fighting, most of the Home Army units were disarmed by the Soviets, and either incorporated into the Polish army within the Red Army, or shipped to Soviet concentration camps.

27. Narodowe Sily Zbrojne (NSZ). An underground resistance organization formed in September 1942, independent of the Home Army. It fought against the Germans and Soviet partisans. After the war, the NSZ fought the communist authorities. As a result of mass arrests of its members by the communist security apparatus, the organization stopped its activities in 1947. Its leaders were executed.

28. The Round Table. A conference of representatives of Solidarity (incl. Lech Walesa, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, and Jacek Kuron) and communist authorities between 6 February and 5 March 1989 in Magdalenka near Warsaw. The negotiations made possible the formation of the first non-communist government in post-war Poland. ... ...

- - - - - - - End of Part 1.