On Wednesday, July 31, the day before the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, a significant ceremony was held at the Polish Consulate General in Manhattan, initiated and organized by Wojciech Maślanka, a journalist from “Nowy Dziennik” and a Polish diaspora activist.
Right from the start, guests could view an exhibition consisting of ten large original colorized photos from the Warsaw Uprising, hung on the fence of the Consulate, which will last for 63 days, until October 3, the day of the fall of the Warsaw Uprising. They will inform New Yorkers about the heroic uprising of the people of Warsaw in 1944. The creator of the colorized photos on display is Mikołaj Kaczmarek, a Polish colorist of photographs from important events in Polish history.
The guests were welcomed by the Consul General, Mateusz Sakowicz, and the consuls Stanisław Starnawski, Krzysztof Płaski, and Tomasz Wielgomas with his wife were also present.
The guests of honor at the ceremony were: Andrzej Rawicz, a Warsaw Uprising participant, and the aforementioned colorist, Mikołaj Kaczmarek, who flew in from Poland especially for the occasion. After the Polish national anthem was sung by Hanna Pogorzelska, this year’s Miss Polonia from Ridgewood, Wojciech Maślanka conducted a conversation with 90-year-old Andrzej Rawicz from Pennsylvania. He talked about his happy childhood before the war, and recalled how, risking his life as a ten-year-old, he distributed a bulletin in Warsaw. He also talked about his family, his mother Krystyna Rawicz-Szabuniewicz, who was active in the Home Army during the war, and his father Józef Rawicz-Szabuniewicz, a Polish and British air force officer, as well as his grandfather Bronisław Ratajczak, who in the first days of the uprising, after conquering the then skyscraper – Prudential, hung a white and red flag on its top. Unfortunately, he died after their tenement house was bombed on September 5, 1944. He also recalled escaping from the train that, together with his grandmother, cousin, aunt, and other insurgents and residents of Warsaw, was sent to the KL Auschwitz concentration camp.
Andrzej Rawicz attaches great importance to family and war memorabilia. Together with his cousin, he donated the newspapers they managed to keep to the Warsaw Uprising Museum. At the exhibition of his memorabilia at the Consulate, he showed one of the insurgent newspapers and his father Józef’s flight book and his medals for war merits, as well as family photos.
Next, Wojciech Maślanka spoke with Mikołaj Kaczmarek, the colorist of the presented insurgent photos. He talked about the technique of colorizing photos and recalled moving meetings with insurgents who were still alive. The first photo he colored was a girl from the Warsaw Uprising, which he found on the Internet. The girl kneels in the yard, where a cemetery has been made and her brother is buried. The colorist has already received many awards for his patriotic work and social activity to popularize history, including the BohaterOn Award of the Warsaw Insurgents, the ZHP Medal and the Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland. The conversation was accompanied by an interesting presentation of colorized photos and from the artist’s meetings with insurgents, prepared by Nicola Gabriela Maślanka. Mikołaj Kaczmarek prepared a surprise, he presented colored family photos to Andrzej Rawicz and Janusz Romański, son of insurgent Lt. Roman Romański, commander of the “Żbik” group.
The artistic part featured the Polonia Children’s Choir, founded in 2020, led by Dominik Grzyb, who played the piano, guitar and accordion. The children, dressed in costumes from the 1940s, movedly sang insurgent songs. Michał Jamrożek, who has already won many music competitions and awards, sang “Lullaby from the Ghetto” in a wonderful falsetto. Children from the Polonia orchestra played the accordion, clarinet and xylophone.
The narrator of the artistic part was a famous Polish film, television and theatre actor, an actor from the Bagatela Theatre in Kraków, Patryk Szwichtenberg. He is known for such productions as: “The Century of the Winny”, “People and Gods”, “Chyłka”, “Osiecka”, “Znachor”, “Pilecki”, “War Girls”, “M jak miłość”.
Representatives of Polish organisations were present among the guests, including: SWAP, scouts, Grand Marshal of the Pulaski Parade, Piotr Praszkowicz with his wife, 97-year-old Helena Knapczyk, a Siberian, currently the chief president of the Ladies’ Auxiliary Corps at the Polish Army Veterans’ Association, 101-year-old Fryderyk Dammont.
The colored photos were the work of Zbigniew Solarz’s printing house.
Text and photos: Zosia Zeleska-Bobrowski
