Today marks the 78th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Uprising - a brave and, according to many, foolhardy fight against the occupying Nazi forces during World War II. Today in Warsaw, streets are decorated with Polish flags. Writing about the country during the period of Solidarity, the New Yorker correspondent Lawrence Weschler observed that when an American says "that's history" it means it's old, unimportant, worth forgetting. When a Pole says "that's history," he observed, you see the veins in his forehead pop out.
Forty years ago on Easter Monday I sat in a small Warsaw apartment and listened to the first broadcast of Radio Solidarity. The political movement had been quashed four months earlier, its leaders put in prison, and its resurrection over the airwaves gave hope to millions of Poles that night.
Hania took me to physical therapy yesterday and, after she had left, the Hispanic woman at reception asked me where she was from. "She has an accent," she said, in her accented English.
"Poland," I replied.
She then expressed her admiration for the generosity the Poles are showing to Ukrainian refugees. And I thought how refreshing it was to say the word "Poland" and then hear praise instead of condemnation.
The Warsaw Philharmonic, presenting a program of Moniuszko, Chopin, and Brahms in Miami last night, began the evening with the Ukrainian national anthem. At the end of the night the orchestra received a standing ovation that, I suspect, was not just about the music.
It was a wonderful weekend for people who like college basketball and tennis, and a great one if you went to Villanova and married a Polish woman in Warsaw.
In Poland, plaques commemorating people who died during World War II note that they were the victims of Nazi, not German, forces. Perhaps when the war is over in Ukraine, plaques can specify that the murders were perpetrated not by Russia but by Putin.