Miednoje |
From a book published 10 years ago. Sixty years ago the NKVD carried out a massacre on twenty one thousand, eight hundred and fifty-seven Polish officers who were captives in the prisoner of war camps of Starobielsk, Kozielsk and Ostashkov as well as in other prisons. It was a crime that called for particular attention from every point of view: firstly, because all agreements and international laws were violated in the most glaring way; secondly, because the killings were carried out on the direct orders of the then leaders of the USSR; but thirdly, and perhaps most disturbingly of all, because of the history of the Katyń lie. It is only when all this is borne in mind that the scale of the challenge placed before the designers of the cemeteries in Katyń, Miednoye and Charkov becomes clear.
Their work was to be a public tribute and memorial, but also a place of private prayer for those most closely involved; it was to call to mind the sufferings of Poles and at the same time to respect the variety of religious faiths represented by the victims. Finally, it was to create clear symbolism using durable materials.
The families of those murdered, and the Polish nation, waited from 1940 for an investigation into the massacres, and then for a dignified farewell to the victims. Judging by the first reactions both of specialists and of representatives of the Katyń families, the designers rose fully to the challenge they were faced with.
Respect for the graves
In 1995 the Commission for Preserving the Memory of Wartime Heroism and Sacrifice declared an open international architectonic competition for a spatial and conceptual design to make use of the terrain of the future cemeteries in Katyń (1.4 hectares), Charkov (2.2 hectares) and Miednoye (1.7 hectares). Architects, sculptors and set designers from five teams, led by Jacek Damięcki, Jerzy Kalin, Witold Mieszkowski, Zdzisław Pidek and Maciej Szańkowski, were invited to participate.
Thirty-three proposals in all were sent in. In October 1996 the competition jury, led by architect Maciej Gintowt, chose for implementation (after two stages) the design proposed by sculptor Zdzisław Pidek's team from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. The team comprised sculptor Andrzej Sołyga, artist Wiesław Synakiewicz and architects Jacek Synakiewicz and Leszek Witkowski. The designers treated the terrain of the future cemeteries as belonging to the sphere of sacrum. Their aim was to limit interference with the natural environment to a minimum.
The jury's comments include the following remark: „The design showed a far-reaching respect for the graves, for the death ditches and for the way in which they would be commemo¬rated, as also for the trees, the dumb witnesses of the crime of genocide. The concept of the underground bell was acknowledged as a particular merit of the design selected for implementation".
The artists commissioned the architects of FORT Studios of Gdańsk (Wojciech Targowski, Antoni Taraszkiewicz, Piotr Mazur) to work out the construction plan, as also the detailed conceptual plan and technical and economic aspects.
Miednoje |
Remarkably swift construction
The construction of the cemetery was supervised and conducted on behalf of the Polish Government by the General Secretary of the Commission for Preserving the Memory of Wartime Heroism and Sacrifice, Andrzej Przewoźnik. The investment begun in the spring of 1999 went on concurrently on all three sites. Taking into account the distances involved and the conditions of construction, which were subject to seasonal difficulties because of climate, the time taken to complete the project, less than a year and a half, is impressively short.
For nine days in each month, the designers benefited from artistic supervision on site. As Andrzej Przewoźnik comments, "The total cost of constructing the Polish cemeteries was thirty-three million zloties. The funding came from the state budget and from the Katyń families".
The construction work was carried out by Budimex S.A., the enterprise that won the tender put out in 1998. The sub-contractor was Energotechnika Ltd of Knurowa. Local workers were also commissioned to do some of the work.
Andrzej Przewoźnik comments " The conduct of this investment was a complicated affair. The various expectations of the families of the victims, the designers and the government all had to be accommodated. Some of the work, such as the casting of the bells, crosses and plaques was done in Poland by the consortium that won the tender, Budimex S.A. and Metalodlew S.A. of Cracow, while the remainder was done in situ. During every stage of construction discussions took place on many planes: emotio¬nal, political, religious, artistic and financial".
Smolensk |
Shared conception,varied terrain
The basic concept of all three cemeteries is similar and the same elements are to be found in each. First, there is the underground mour¬ning bell. Of this, the originators of the concept wrote in their commentary for the competi¬tion: "It is as if the bell, whose sonorous voice is a call to prayer, or whose tolling from a tower inspires fear, were here imprisoned, buried. The sound of the underground bell is subdued, but it cannot be completely silenced. It is a warning to future generations." Second, there is the sacrificial altar-table (Altar, stela, sacrificial stone — these are symbols insepara¬bly linked with religious ritual in honour of the dead. Without such an element this space would have the dead character of a museum, rather than that of a place of living memory).
Third, there is the wall-gate with the names of the victims that lie in each cemetery ("In order to enter the cemetery one must stand in front of a great gate. It is open, vanquished. (...) The plane of the leaden surface is covered like a page of history with the names of the victims, imprinted like typeset. The mechanical charac¬ter of the record connects it with the system by which the execution was carried out.") A sculpturally shaped layer of cement, calling to mind a cross-section of earth, was also con¬structed in the cemeteries. At its base, plaques with individual inscriptions are displayed. Placed by the lines of inscriptions are bas-reliefs presenting military honours: the Virtuti Militari Cross and the September Campaign Cross. All the sculptural elements are made of cast iron covered with a rust-coloured film. Not only their colour, but also the shape of the letters and the facture were selected with the utmost reverence.
The differences between the cemeteries in Charkov, Katyń and Miednoye result partly from the varied shapes of the terrain, partly from geological conditions and also from the results of the exhumation work at each of the cemeteries.
In Katyń, on either side of the main avenue, laid with basalt paving blocks, six collective graves were placed, with five metre crosses lying on them. The remains of the victims exhumed from the ditches of death were transferred to the graves. The ditches themselves, exposed to view as "stains" covered with cast iron plates, are the most moving element of this concept.
The necropolis in Miednoye, apart from the permanent sculptural forms situated on its terrain, that is the bell, the table, the walls and epitaph plaques, is characterised by the least degree of interference in the natural surroun¬dings. The seven-metre cast iron crosses, calling to mind the cut trunks of red pines, seem to be almost part of the forest.
As the originators of the design write, the formal inspiration for the spatial concept of the cemetery in Charkov was a historical document in the shape of the BLACK ROAD. The arrangement of the blocked graves to be found on either side along this road was exploited in the design as an important illustration of facts
and of the possibility of reconstructing events in emotional close-up. The ditches that might hide the corpses of Polish officers and Ukra¬inian citizens were dug up within the area of this symbolic road. In consequence, the 'Black Road" and the tens of burial places adjacent to it constitute a unity. The effect was achieved by distinguishing these places with paving blocks of black basalt.
The rounded, 'tight" forms of the barrows (a form of forest grave frequently met in Poland) contrast with the levelled plane of the road. Their surface is laid with a high quality small black basalt paving block. This formal idea makes us conscious of the number of human beings who lie in each grave. From the central points of the barrows cast iron crosses grow out, Roman Catholic on the Polish graves, Orthodox on the Ukrainian ones. The area of the crime is marked out by the "NOOSE" of the "Black Road", while the symmetric avenue with its individual inscrip¬tions (the cemetery's main axis) cuts across the irregular contours of the graves. This element of the concept, as in the case of the cemeteries in Katyń and Miednoye, has the form of an archaeological exposure.
Located here are fifty-seven smaller Ukrainian graves and fourteen larger Polish ones. Catholic and Orthodox crosses stand beside one another. The graves, like the Black Road, are covered with black basalt paving blocks. This solution was also intended to indicate the impossibility of precisely marking the sites of the crime. However, the idea of permitting separate places for national ceremonies was not given up.
By Ewa Rozwadowska
Charkow, Katyn, Miednoje: Polish Cemetery, Gdynia 2000 r. pages 17-18
The Katyn Monument in Baltimore |
Hear Us - translation
These dumb trees, dumb earth, these stones
A soundless witness to appalling crime
They saw it - here in the moment of drama
Yet none will speak of what they know.
Shut in their silence, they keep the secret:
Souls in thousands, row on row - their road to heaven
And straight to God they lift
Their long litany of unspoken pain.
Only the wind will hum a sad song sometimes
Will whip up and greet the graves in wonder
Then hurry on to raise the echo to the world
An echo that none will understand.
The owl will fly up with a sinister cry
Recall the massacre of years ago.
For us it is nothing, a dead sound only,
For them this sound means - Katyn.
These dumb trees, dumb earth, these stones
On guard to hide sad history
Cause them to open and reveal before You
The truth, these people in their burial ground
Sylwia Jażdżewska
Class III, Waclaw Sierpinski High School
Gdynia
Usłysz - oryginał po polsku
Te nieme drzewa, niema ziemia, kamienie
Bezgłośni okropnej tragedii świadkowie
Widzieli - bo byli tam w chwili dramatu
Nikt z nich nic jednak nie powie.
Zamknięte w swej ciszy, tają wspomnienia
Tysiące dusz rzędem - do nieba ich droga
I długą litanię, w cierpieniu milcząc,
Zanoszą prosto do Boga.
Wiatr czasem tylko smutną pieśń zanuci
Przystanie, groby w zadumie powita
I dalej popędzi w świat zanieść echo,
Którego nikt nie odczyta.
Sowa przyleci, złowieszczo zahuczy
Przypomni masakrę sprzed wielu laty,
Dla nas to tylko głuchy dźwięk - nic więcej
Dla nich ten dźwięk znaczy - Katyń.
Te nieme drzewa, niema ziemia, kamienie
Strażnicy kryjący smutnych dziejów chwile
Pozwól, by mogli przed Tobą wyjawić
Prawdę o ludziach w mogile.
Sylwia Jażdżewska
The Katyn & Siberia memorials in Jersey City |
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