Mark Krawczynski, as the above profile testifies, is an incredibly accomplished person of international distinction. Unfortunately, an audio recording was not made of Mark’s introduction to “Out of the Ashes” at its Australian premiere, at the Polish Consulate in Sydney. Krawczynski’s talk was an inspirational precursor to a euphoric evening experience for the 200 or so people who squeezed into the theatrette at the Polish Consulate in Sydney.
In his introductory presentation, Marek provided the context for the documentary. His father’s achievements in Poland and refusal to bend to the ‘communist will’ brought the family to Australia; a new start in a distant and unfamiliar land. Success again, culminating in the building of the family home characterised by its Polish cultural soul, a bridge to his and his parents past. Growing up in Sydney, becoming a concert pianist, and then following his father’s footsteps into architecture. His hard work and rise to the top of his profession in Australia. A sombre atmosphere filled the room when it heard of his father’s tragic return from Poland, with the Warsaw Panorama still clasped in his hand. Though Zbigniew adopted Australia and loved its lifestyle and people, he never lost his Polish Soul, and Australians benefited from Zbigniew’s ‘Polishness’. Now that Marek lives and works in Poland the corresponding effect is Poland is gaining from Marek’s ‘Australianness’!
I was startled by the image Mark created in my mind when he pointed out that the death and destruction in Warsaw was greater than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, the Japanese cities on which atomic bombs were dropped in World War 2. Now I was fully aware of the scale of ‘Out of the Ashes’. It honed and riveted my concentration for the rest of the evening.
Mark’s ability as a motivational speaker is exceptional. Fortunately the Q&A session that followed the viewing of the film, was recorded. I thank Zdzislaw Radziszewski for providing me a copy that I could use to transcribe what was said. The wisdom and positive energy it exudes deserves a wider audience. The power of the message was palpable, in the sigh of the audience, when Mark revealed that the house his father had designed and built in Sydney was sold. How well Krawczynski resonated with his audience can be understood through the fact that when Polish Consul, Daniel Gromann called for questions, of the four responses from the audience, only one was a question! The other three were vivid descriptions aroused in each speaker’s memory bank of poignant emotional experiences. No doubt this effect was more widespread in the audience than just the three people who shared their feelings with the audience.
Personally, it brought back a picture of defiance to tyranny which I believe is emblazoned in the God given human soul. I remembered Lidice. The small town in Czechoslovakia that was to be permanently wiped from the face of the Earth on Hitler’s orders, as a reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the high ranking National Socialism official who was also known as ‘The Hangman’. People around the world responded. For example, coal miners in Britain immediately created the Lidice Shall Live organisation and raised funds to make sure Lidice would be rebuilt after the war, and it was. People around the world spontaneously decided to change the names of their local towns, villages, streets and other places. San Jeronimo in Mexico became San Jeronimo-Lidice; Potrero in far away Panama changed to Lidice de Capira; heavily bombed Coventry in England named part of its city, Lidice Square. Bohuslav Martinu was inspired to compose the orchestral piece Memorial to Lidice and American author, Edna St Vincent Millay wrote the poem: The Murder of Lidice. Films such as The Silent Village were produced. The human spirit will not allow the intentions of tyrants to prevail.
This human characteristic can be appreciated in the citizens of Warsaw and Poland and is commemorated so profoundly in Peter Beveridge’s production of "Out of the Ashes". Thank you Peter and Mark for a memory I will treasure for the rest of my life. But if only I could share it with everyone I know. I wish I could capture the euphoric atmosphere created by the film, by Mark in his introduction, by the audience thinking as one, by the poignant memories of audience participants in the question and answer session. I wish I could have captured these moments and put them in a corked bottle that I could carry with me and uncork it at appropriate moments to let the spirit of "Out of the Ashes" waft through the air and have its positive effects on the people nearby. Alas, it can’t be done. All that we have to share with the rest of the world of this wonderful evening is the transcript of the Q&A session.
Transcript: Out of the Ashes (Warsaw at end of WW2)
Polish Consul Mr Daniel Gromann
Ladies and gentlemen I would like to thank Marek [Krawczynski] very very much for his beautiful story. What an incredible story of survival and revival, very moving for me as well because Warsaw is my home town so I love it and its an incredible personal journey as well and a family journey. Of course I should say there is not much I can add to this but just to remind you that Poland is a member of the European Union and we are actually holding the presidency of the European Union in the second half of the year as well. So that’s another side of our success in recent years.
Let’s maybe give ourselves after a few minutes, after a quarter of an hour for some questions, if you have any questions for Marek he will be happy to answer them and then you are most welcome to have some drinks and snacks. But let’s have some questions first, if there are any
MK
Thank you very much.
Member of the Audience
I am not sure that this qualifies exactly as a question but certainly as a memory of Warszawa. I remember visiting those perfectly reconstructed baroque churches and seeing how in so many of them there would be a plaque which detailed exactly what had happened in 1944 and 45, and those events were frequently horrific, with whole congregations being machine gunned or burned alive inside the church and that really went into my heart. Especially that now it was completely restored except perhaps for some memento of what had taken place in those days. That I found deeply moving and thanks directly for the memory of it.
MK
Thank you for that comment. Yes it’s a very emotional place to live in. I spend most of my time there now. I am always reminded and astounded by the atrocities that human beings can perpetrate on each other. It’s just staggering and you know I think it’s important to see films like this. We keep on saying let’s never forget that this should never happen again and yet we keep on doing it again.
I sometimes wonder what is wrong with human nature that we keep on doing such evil to other human beings. I hope, I mean Europe is now gradually peaceful and we have had a long period of peace. I hope this stays because we have had two shockers in the last century and I don’t think there is anything to compare in the world because it was done with such an intensity and in such a long time and one war wasn’t enough we had to have another one. I really feel that we should stand by and contemplate the good things in our lives and we are forever coming to those sorts of levels of conflict that was the First World War and the Second World War. Otherwise . . . well, you know there are more than seventy major conflicts in the world today. So we don’t seem to get out of this terrible pattern of killing each other in great numbers. It is peaceful in Europe and I am hopeful that it is a good sign that we at least have reached a maturity that we will maintain for a while. I am very sad to see what happens in Africa, in parts of Asia and the Middle East. Apart from Europe, it’s a tragedy. How do we change our mindset?
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I wanted to do this film and would be grateful, I hope that Peter Beveridge is here, but has Peter arrived? Peter, look, you missed my introduction but I am very grateful for what you did, for your persistence, for your detail . . . Peter, please stand up, I mean so people will see you. (Garbled) Thank you very much for pushing me into doing some of the things I found rather difficult, but it took an Australian to come to Poland to show us a slightly different perspective on the way we think about things. That I think it’s very important that we can use this to show the world what shouldn’t happen but if it does how we can rebuild with enormous energy.
I am taking this film to Thailand in two weeks’ time, where they want to use it in the media to show how a nation can recover after enormous devastation because of the huge floods. I am really pleased we can do this. So Poland is being used as a symbol, as an icon of success and positive energy.
And it’s interesting that we can do this with help from outside with an Australian producer, because Poland itself is sometimes retrospective in looking at all of its martyrs and all its destruction and it sometimes forgets how much success it has had. And we need to emphasise this I think as Polish people we should do this all the time to keep on reminding our fellow countrymen and the rest of the world that there is so much we will do when we can get our act together. So that these films are important and I hope there are others made in this vein because there has been too much tragedy and we do focus a little bit too much on the martyrdom of the past. I am very glad it is going to be shown in Thailand and then in other parts of Europe and in America because I hope that it gives you a feeling of positive energy. It is not meant to frighten people or make them depressed. It is supposed to show us that we can actually overcome all adversity and I hope this film has shown this to you. Thank you.
Member of the Audience
Mark what has become of your father’s house? Is it being used as he had hoped?
MK
Unfortunately it has not turned out the way he had planned. When he died, the energy I guess dissipated and went to another place. Now it went back to Poland which I think is rather appropriate. It allowed me to go back with his drawing which will be now on exhibition in the Museum of the History of Warsaw. We have had one exhibition already, and we need to do some work on the drawing. I keep on coming back here to Australia to recharge my batteries. Because I work pretty intensively in Poland right now. My father’s house unfortunately at the moment has been sold. [the audience sighs]As of last week[the audience sights again, more acutely], and which is a great personal tragedy for me, but there is always a silver lining to every cloud. The money is actually going to pay for some of the film’s production. So I think my parent’s would have been very pleased that the house that they created and put so much heart and soul into is going to pay for the promotion of this film.
You know we can make films but if people don’t see them in large numbers then perhaps we miss the point a little bit. I really feel that this film should be shown widely to different parts of the world because it is positive. You know there was no greater tragedy than the Warsaw experience and yet we should draw positive conclusions from it, and I hope other nations do the same.
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Poland has been a victim over three or four hundred years in a very terrible way but it has maintained its soul as they say in the film. And I think we should all remember that. You know this tragedy in Thailand is awful and I hope that they get a bit of support energy because of seeing this film. So I hope when I go there in two weeks I hope there will be at least somewhere to show it because Bangkok has been under water for about a week, but they are still maintaining their positive plans and they were saying this will be over there on the 22nd of November I will be there showing this film doing a lecture about Australian culture and Australian architecture.
I think this international sharing of information and notions is very important because we are too concerned with finance, with conflicts, with weapons. I mean what is life about? It should be about coming together, building things. You know creating a mutual positive energy. It is not about how much money you can make or how many people we can kill in another country because we have better weapons. I really hope that this is just the tip of the iceberg. I hope that from here we will go to better films, to more positive ideas. We do great horror films. You know people get very excited when people get chopped by chain saws. I mean hell, what’s wrong with us? This is real. We are very good and filming tragedies in real life, but let’s learn from this. Now let’s draw positive conclusions.
So, you know, once again Peter I just can’t say enough about this. I am so pleased that you inspired me that you directed me, that you forced me into doing things which I think I objected to and I thank you once again.
Member of the Audience
Yes, three years ago I spent some time in a refugee camp in Ghana where Liberian people, refugees were there, and they were asking …. was . . . . I thought well they will go back to rebuild the country. I wanted to, I reminded myself well this happened in Poland and I tried to reconstruct how is it happening, that people come together. They don’t have much and still can rebuild. I don’t know and I realised that even though I lived in Poland in the fifties and sixties, this still escaped me. I don’t know how it was done. So I wasn’t much of a use to people. I just don’t think must - - - - who can I contact who knows how it was done? So sure, this will be useful, this film.
MK
Well, please contact our foundation. I am very glad to answer questions. It was an incredible task, building this, that I should emphasise once again that - - - It is an interesting comparison, you know I was talking a little about the Opera House and I had the great honour of being involved in the rebuilding of it many years after it was first constructed. But that building took fifteen years approximately, from start to finish, with Utzon doing about sixty percent of it before doing some awkward decisions and threw him out. But it cost two billion dollars in today’s money. A huge undertaking, it was too much for Australia to pay at the beginning, with no technology. But anyway, we did it and now it is probably the most famous icon in the world. Anywhere I go on a lecture about Australia and I show them the Opera House and everybody goes ‘Wow, we know where that is’.
We built it in Australia. But we built this in fifteen years at a cost of two billion dollars. The whole city of Warsaw was rebuilt also in fifteen years, about six years before the Opera House. It’s curious that we were building the Opera House while they were building the Old Town. The Opera House has had great marketing, probably the best in the world, and everybody knows it. The whole town of Warsaw has not had that much marketing because we had that very oppressive regime for, thirty, forty, fifty years, and they wouldn’t allow it to be advertised. In fact what the film said very subtly is that the whole town was built, but the Zamek, the King’s Palace, was not rebuilt. Not because of a lack of support, but the Communist regime simply said you can’t do this. You are getting too strong. You know the nation is growing up. We can’t have this. You can’t touch it until much later so it was done. Well after the delay of fifteen years after the city was rebuilt. But it’s interesting that the whole city was rebuilt, a huge project with no money from the Marshall Plan.
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But the Marshall Plan was given to the Germans, to the French and to many other nations, in the terms of trillions of dollars. It wasn’t just billions, it was trillions. Then hence West Germany and France rebuilt very nicely, with enormous funds from the West. Mainly from America, and from other nations. Now Poland was refused those funds, or the Russian regime said we can’t use any of this. And they left a pittance for the people of Warsaw to rebuild the city. Poland never saw that sort of money. The people came along and with their bare hands and they rebuilt the city. There was no equipment. You could see in the film, they were using traditional methods from a hundred years before. It was all done by hand. Now that’s I think an even bigger achievement because it was done at the same time as the Opera House but with no equipment and with no money. Now how did they do it? That’s the miracle of that whole project. That it was such an incredible undertaking with no support and no technology. So, you know like in (Garbled) if you have got a vision it can be done. I guess that the value of Poland is that Poland has an incredibly rich history and a very good educated population. That by its good people, so they have that as the foundation stone. They keep on getting run over by other more powerful nations over and over again. But they keep on getting up again.
And I also find it interesting and I am a big fan of cultures that know how to develop themselves and look after themselves. These people have stood up to all aggression. They have not been aggressors for a few hundred years. They did not take over other countries because they are a fairly delicate race. You know maybe Polish people don’t think of themselves as delicate, but I think that it actually is. Now I think it’s a very delicate nation. They have subtlety. They are not out there, you know, ‘we are going to beat the world’. They do it subtly. And I think that it’s a big achievement. I am very glad we are going to Thailand with this, because I think they are also a very subtle nation that has been clobbered by many nasty neighbours. So they have been a little bit similar.
Now I think we’ve got to establish new networks in the world. Now we have had the excesses of communism. We have had the excesses of military might of various nations. And I think we have to find a new mindset. We have to look at the world in a new light. Let’s appreciate people for being people, not for the money they make or the power they control. Now I think that thinking about these things is the first step. What we do with it I am not sure because it’s a very complicated world you know with over six billion people. Goodness, who would have thought of this forty or fifty years ago [audience interjection: seven, seven billion] Seven billion! I am sorry - you see, when did that happen? Not yet. I mean we have big problems and I think we should solve them constructively. Yes please.
Member of the Audience
I just thought that it was interesting that in Australia you speak about the fact that you wanted to take from Australia to Poland the very valuable teamwork and spirit and all that. But I did think that your film showed that people in Warsaw had a quintessential spirit of team players, team spirit because there is no way after the devastation, the concentration camps, Siberia, everything that Poles went through, and being penniless, destitute and losers in this war, because they were losers as a result of the international circumstances and deals etc. And no funds that you were just referring to now, I think that was the most supreme example of quintessential team spirit, because with bare hands and hungry and poor, to be shifting bricks and sorting out those stuff that fitted in and those that didn’t. We are good in Australia with team spirit, but that I think that is heroic and that is the ultimate in team spirit. For me, and my father came from Warsaw, and I pay tribute to those people who did that. Thank you.
MK
That was very well put. Thank you, thank you very much. I couldn’t agree more. You know there is one difference however which I think is worth remembering, that we are fantastic at team activities in Poland, but only when we are devastated; when we are wiped out. In times of great adversity we can actually muster together and work together. However I would like this to be taken once step higher in the future because in Australia we are best at successful projects. At moving into the future. To do things when we want to go ahead. In Poland there is too much bickering, I must admit. You know we are great when there is an adversary coming and wiping out the whole nation, gee we can protect ourselves to some extent. We can lose ten million people and we can live with that and we can get up and you know rebuild.
But what happens when we have a long period of peace in Poland? Not as much. And that is what I would like to instil in the Polish nation. I mean, I can’t do this myself, but you know I think we should change our mindset in Poland a little bit to looking at what we can do for the next ten years. To looking what we can achieve together when we have the opportunity. Let’s not wait till somebody else destroys us, or buys us out or sells us out. Let’s do it together and let’s work out what we want to do together. Instead what is done in Poland is talking about what has been terrible. Why it’s been terrible. Why are we not better known. Why aren’t we more successful. But I don’t see too much coming from anywhere about the future being a success.
This is one of the best nations in the world and I think it will happen in spite of the people being a little too modest. We are too introverted. We don’t go out and promote ourselves. You know if I don’t show this film in America, Americans still think of Poland as, I am sorry to say, but a little bit as a second rate nation. We don’t have visa possibilities yet. We have to especially apply to go to America. And there some technical reasons for that, it’s not just, you know, purely a social thing. But we are not seen as a world - - as winners. As you were saying, we are not seen as winners. I think we should be.
Australia is seen as a winner. And I don’t know how many people here spend the time in Poland, but I am quite impressed that in Poland, Australia is constantly seen on the news as a very successful, important nation. Now goodness, it’s half the size of Poland. There is twenty one million people here, there is thirty eight million in Poland. Why are we seen so, as such significant winners in Australia, and we seem like this in Poland. They keep on filming us as being experts in everything. In Poland, Australia is commonly filmed as being experts in everything. You know we are good, but not that good.
In Poland the experts are there, but nobody recognises them until they go to America. And even then somebody says, ‘gee this Polish person invented this moon buggy. Who knew about that’. Well we don’t talk about it because we are too modest. We have incredible successes in the world but we are too modest to brag about it. Well what I am saying is, hey lets all get together when somebody has a success, lets praise it. In Poland we tend to be a little bit critical, ‘hey he’s been successful. I am going to do something to take away from his success’. Well I am thinking, it should be ‘hey he’s been successful let’s imitate him, let’s support him, let’s all work together and make it a bigger success’. And that is the difference between Australia and Poland. We are great in times of adversity, but we are not great at looking at being successful during peaceful times. So, you know, I agree with you, but I think we could do a lot better. So that’s my little personal opinion.
Any more questions? I am quite happy to go on if you have any questions. Very well.
Daniel Gromann
Well, all right thank you very much once again for Marek and Peter and the honour of premiering this film. I don’t think we could hear anything more stirring. ……. Thank you very much for coming. Enjoy the rest of the evening.
