As announced previously, our friend and colleague Attila Szalai was among the winners of the 5th Witness of History prize awarded by the Institute of National Remembrance for promoting Polish history abroad. The award ceremony was a great opportunity for Artur Kolęda to talk to the winner.
Artur Kolęda: Mr. Attila, you were among the winners of this year's Witness of Memory prize awarded by the Institute of National Remembrance - Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation. What does this award mean for you?
Attila Szalai: It is a great honour for me. I do not know if I fully deserve it. These ladies, among whom I have found myself, certainly deserve this award much more. Svetlana Filonova and Olena Udovenko from Ukraine are working to commemorate the Katyń Massacre. Małgorzata Miedwiediewa fights unwaveringly for the revival of the Polish language, culture and history in Ukraine. In her activities aimed at reviving the Polish language, culture and history, she devotes special attention to nurturing and commemorating places in Bar related to the martyrdom of the Polish nation, including the commemoration of the victims of the NKVD's "Polish operation" and caring for the burial sites of Polish soldiers. The magnificent Maria Sulima from Belarus actively works for the benefit of teaching Polish language, popularization of Polish culture and knowledge of national history. Thanks to her activity, numerous monuments, plaques and crosses commemorating Polish history were erected in the Brest region. In addition, Maria writes moving patriotic poems, two of which she recited after receiving the award – everyone had tears in their eyes.... It is also difficult to count the contributions to the Polish nation of the Polish Centre in Turin and Professor Aleksandra Ziółkowska-Boehm from the United States, author of popular books devoted to figures significant for the recent history of Poland, familiarizing the American reader with Polish history in an accessible way.
I mentioned everyone in the group to highlight the company which I found myself in thanks to my book On Polish Soil - notes from 1976-1990, which documents my stay in Poland during the last one and a half decades of communism. These diaries describe everyday life, political events, include reflections and, one could say, reports from the past. On the basis of fragments already translated, The Institute of National Remembrance decided that this was valuable oral history and, in addition to the award for a chronicler, I also received a promise that the whole thing would be translated into Polish and published next year.
AK: You have been dealing with Polish history and culture for many years, you speak excellent Polish. Tell me, what in Polish history fascinates, captivates you?
AS: To put it simply – the entire history. Because almost every aspect of it, if not directly, then indirectly, from some perspective is connected with our Hungarian history. What fascinated me from the very beginning was historical memory. The fact that Poles did not allow for the erasure of the past, despite the fact that every authority tried to rewrite history. One simply has to take a closer look at, say, the three partitioners - what balancing feats they had to perform with scams, applying all their might to eradicate the nation, to destroy the sense of identity - limiting, for example, education in Polish. The Polish Church deserves great here - often one could truly be a Pole only in a parish house. However, "the communist period" was undoubtedly the most difficult, which put it bluntly, that " the old world, it shall be destroyed like fallen petals and splashed water". - but the Poles didn't let this one happen. I mean both the valuable activities of the emigration and the cultivation of tradition, within the family circle, in a country oppressed by totalitarianism. Unfortunately, Polish history does not lack tragic moments and events, but the memory of them remained alive, regardless of the political system. Katyń, the heroic actions of the Home Army, the Warsaw Uprising were remembered, despite the prohibitions and threats from the authorities. In Hungary, for example, after the suppression of the beautiful 1956 Hungarian Uprising, Kádár applied a repulsive terror that had never been seen before in the history of the country, which, among other things, resulted in the fact that the intimidated society, even within the family, kept silent about historical events.
In 1968, after graduating from high school when I first came to Poland, Poles surprised me by the fact that they knew more about Hungarian October than we did ourselves. The communists did not like the Home Army, but the Polish society forced the authorities to put up commemorative plaques at sites where Polish blood was spilled. The communist system in Hungary did not allow even the humblest memory of what was good in the previous system, which was hailed as nationalist, even fascist.
And here, too, is a history lesson from 1968. I am standing with a Hungarian colleague on a road near Ostróda, trying to hitchhike to Gdańsk. We wave the Hungarian flag, the Volkswagen Beetle stops. A man, about fifty years old, jumps out of the car and comes to us, kisses our flag with tears in his eyes. It turns out that he was a former refugee who found asylum in Hungary during the war. He invited us to his summer house, and for two days we had an extraordinary history lesson from him. He told us about things we had no idea about. I could go on forever talking about similar cases. The natural consequence was that I enrolled for a Polish language course at the Polish Centre for Culture and Information in Budapest. I wanted to learn the language so that I could genuinely immerse myself in such things about which we had little or no talk of. And in Poland there was greater intellectual and artistic freedom than in Hungary. For many of us, Poland was a window onto the world.
AK: For Poles, Hungary was a substitute for the West - full stocked shops, illuminated streets, monuments, beautiful Budapest. It was like going to France to Hungary.
AS: The Kádár system was truly devilish. After 1956, the terror lasted for a few years, and then a rule was introduced: Whoever Is Not Against Us Is for Us. This meant: ‘citizen, if you do not interfere in politics, we will give you relative peace of mind'. In addition, supplies were organised quite efficiently, but the threat was constantly repeated: any revolts, any signs of discontent could ruin this relative prosperity overnight. The society finally consented to it. Only much later, close to the change of regime, did it come to light that the price of this small stabilization was the state’s terrible. To this day, we are paying back those loans, and borrowing more for this purpose. It is very difficult to get out of this devilish circle, out of this spiral of debt.
In Poland, for a short period of time, in the first half of the seventies, Gierek also tried to introduce something similar, but he did not manage to extend it for as long as Kádár did. At that time, Hungarians used to come to Poland for shopping, for a while there were more western products there than we had.
AK: Let's move on to the present day. In Europe Poles are often accused of being permeated with history, of looking backwards and harbouring grudges, of rekindling old conflicts. Do you agree with this opinion?
AS: Those who make such accusations are descendants or followers of Jacobins or followers of the idea of the International: " The old world, it shall be destroyed like fallen petals and splashed water, this is the final struggle,...".... I could also quote Orwell here: "Who controls the past controls the future.” And that's what they're after. To control memory, even vocabulary, to set only the right version of history, to erase from memory everything on which national identity can be based. This is a new edition of Bolshevism, the aim of which is to create a human mass without roots, because it is the easiest to manipulate. Nowadays, this trend is called liberalism, or rather libertinism. These forces are concerned with the abolition of nation states, the assembly of separate cultures. Unfortunately, this does not apply only to Poland and Poles. We Hungarians also experience similar criticism ourselves. We are supposed to defuse the beautiful chapters of our history, to throw mud at national heroes, so that no one feels less worthy than another. And this is not a process that has emerged in recent years.
I remember that in 1978, when I was in the West for the first time, in Sweden, I noticed that all announcers on television were ugly, while on the streets I saw many handsome men and women. I asked my friends if I could see well. Oh, yes, they said it is deliberate: they choose not very attractive people, so that the viewer doesn't feel bad that they are less attractive than the presenter.... Madness, isn't it? We shouldn't worry about these critics, we have to continue to do our job. This is clearly sick. I contrasted this with Piłsudski's words: "Those who do not respect and value their past are not worthy of respect for the present or the right to the future.” And ley’s stick to that!
AK: We are now facing a growing offensive of historical politics. Instead of history, the strongest countries in the world impose their narrative on everyone, their story of the past. Poland and Hungary have become comfortable whipping boys in the historical politics of Russia, Germany, France and so on. They do everything they can to present us in a bad light, they attribute all possible sins to us - to distract us from their own. What should we do? How can we defend ourselves?
AS: We shouldn't spare money, efforts or actions. Yes, we don't have the same financial resources as Hollywood, but we should make as many historical films as possible. And in such an attractive way as Jerzy Hoffman did when he transferred the Trilogy to the screens. Education of young people is also very important, we have to adapt the school curricula in an appropriate way. But all this must not be boring, you should rely on the image, these materials should be easily accessible on the Internet, even on smartphones, because the young generation is strongly connected with electronics. It is also worth organizing as many festivals of living archaeology, reconstruction groups, because it attracts the attention of young people. And while playing, they learn their own identity. We should also create English-language portals where we discuss the accusations against us. Unfortunately, it costs money, but I see no other way out.
AK: There are many countries in Central Europe, but only Poland and Hungary try to defend the subjectivity of our region, to show its separate history and cultural heritage. Why is this the case, why do Poles and Hungarians not have the support of other countries and peoples of the region in this matter?
AS: This is a really big problem. There are many small states in our region, which in the last century have been striving for independent existence and sovereignty. In this area of Europe, Poland and Hungary were the large countries which, within their borders, had smaller enclaves for centuries. However, this is over, and I think that neither Poland nor Hungary have imperialist dreams, but rather the other way round: as part of initiatives such as Visegrád cooperation, we are trying to work together to achieve a better future. Even the blind should see that the idea of creating the Three Seas Initiative is the best solution for our region. Individually, we will always be exposed to threats of division and rule from the East and West. If, however, we were to unite like a kind of union, we would create a powerful force, a block of 100-120 million people! Not only Europe and Asia, but also the whole world, would have to take such an alliance seriously. Unfortunately, the disputes, the historical feuds are making it difficult for us to do so. That is why it is so important to reach an agreement on historical policy issues. If we succeed in removing these obstacles, there could be a genuine renaissance, a remarkable development of the region.
AK: What is the most important and valuable thing that we should present to Western Europe from the common historical experience of Poles and Hungarians?
AS: This is probably cooperation, coexistence, successive mutual alignment of interests for over a thousand years. We had a common border of over 500 km until 1920. It was one of the longest common borders in Europe and at the same time with least conflicts. We can count the armed conflicts between us on the fingers of two of our hands. We can calmly set an example for the European Union: we worked closely together without imposing any political or economic philosophy on the other, we exchanged cultural goods, we gave asylum to the persecuted without compromising the opportunities for further cooperation.
I am going back to images: I manically repeat that we should make a great historical film about Stefan Batory. It would be an opportunity to show that which unites us, Poles and Hungarians, and more. Here is the Prince of Transylvania (now Romania), he sits on the throne of the Republic of Poland, repulses Moscow's imperial aspirations, his bodyguard is made up of Lithuanians, and if it wasn't for his short life, who knows, maybe he would have managed to create a great, effective coalition against Islam, Turks trying to conquer the whole of Europe..... The film would be co-produced by all the countries lying between the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and the Adriatic. The script was written by history – one only has to reach for the finished product.
But the most important thing is to show the world that our past does not set us apart. It brings us together
AK: The former Hungarian Ambassador to Poland, Ákos Engelmayer, in an interview given to Grzegorz Górny and Paweł Cebula published in the book, The Hungarian Runner said, among others: "The pro-Polish attitude is part of Hungarian patriotism.” Is this how you see it, too? Does every Hungarian patriot really like and love Poland?
AS: That's how it really is. I only regret that this is a very positive stereotypical behaviour, rarely supported by appropriate knowledge about Poland.
That is why I believe that Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński made a very important decision when they established cooperating institutions, namely the Wacław Felczak Foundation in Hungary and the Wacław Felczak Institute for Polish-Hungarian Cooperation in Poland. It is particularly important to educate Polish and Hungarian youth about our common culture and history.
AK: 80 years ago, tragic events took place for us: the aggression of the Third Reich and the Soviet Union on Poland. It also turned out that in this misfortune we have friends. About 130 thousand Poles found not only shelter in Hungary, but also a vast, long-lasting help. I do not have the opportunity to thank all the Hungarians, but at least I would like to express my gratitude to you.
Congratulations on the award and thank you for the interview.