September 1st marked the 85th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland that began World War II. I was in Warsaw on August 1st, when the city commemorated the 80th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Uprising. The Old Town was alive with musicians singing old war songs and actors reenacting street battles. At five o’clock, the official start time of the uprising, a huge crowd filled the square in front of the Royal Castle. After a moment of silence, sirens wailed and flares were lit. Then everyone sang the national anthem: “Poland is not yet lost,” it begins, “as long as we are living.”
Yesterday was the 45th anniversary of John Paul II’s first return to his homeland as pope. I was back in Poland on a two-week tourist visa, after more or less being expelled from the country four months earlier, and Hania and I watched the pope’s motorcade as it arrived in Warsaw and, later that day, attended the mass on Victory Square. A religious service on the main square of the capital of a socialist country was unprecedented, historic, and, of course, much more than religious. It was obvious, as people listened intently to their pope’s homily, who the real leader of Poland was. And, surrounded by thousands of their like-minded citizens, they had irrefutable proof that they made up a powerful majority.
Today is Polish Constitution Day (commemorating the document adopted in 1791) and yesterday was Polonia Day (Polonia is the term for the Polish community abroad). As I write in my memoir, the fact that the diaspora has been given a name testifies to its long and significant history.
We had a small but very attentive group at PRIME Expo on Saturday. People nodded in recognition and laughed at my jokes. During the Q&A, a man stood up and, leaning on his walker, said that he had worked with the U.S. Embassy in Poland in the mid-70s. Then he told a story about one of his colleagues, on his morning jog through Krakow, stumbling across a man kneeling at a shrine. He apologized profusely, and the man not only brushed off the collision but asked him to stay and chat. In introduction, the American said that he worked at the American consulate. The Pole said that he worked at the cathedral. He didn’t mention that he was the archbishop, Karol Wojtyła – the man who in a few years would become pope.
I thought the Polish joke had finally been retired – thanks to people like Lech Wałęsa and Pope John Paul II – but it was brushed off and presented last night on, of all the places, the Daily Show. In the middle of his well-aimed attack on Tucker Carlson – for his adoring visit to the country that invaded Ukraine Jon Stewart made two gratuitous cracks about Poles, the people who have taken in over a million Ukrainians. Apparently that massive and ongoing humanitarian action cannot save the country from being the butt of jokes in America.
Today is Fat Thursday (Tłusty Czwartek) in Poland. Why the Poles celebrate on Thursday and not on Tuesday I never found out, probably because I was too busy eating the traditional doughnuts (pączki) filled with rose-petal jam.