There is one thing I do not like about the Orchestra. After the Finale, you have to explain that you did not want to gain anything personally from collecting money for a worthy cause.
Voices challenging values such as honesty, the desire to help, and human kindness have roared out at us—values one feels when going out into the city streets on the day of the Finale and to all the places where the Orchestra is playing.
“The day after,” an opinion appeared about the “self-promotion of one’s own team” during the organization of the WOŚP Finale in Bolesławiec. These are no longer accidental posts on forums, but an official summary of the Finale on one of Bolesławiec’s portals. The information itself is anonymous, signed by a certain “Krystyna,” although everyone knows that no Krystyna writes for that portal. And if she suddenly did appear, she must represent the editors’ views, because they are the ones who approve the texts published there.
“Krystyna” attacked everyone who took an active part in the Finale. Via Sudetica, the main organizer, offended her, as did Istotne Informacje, the media patron, the committee and councilors, who collected donations, and finally the president himself. “Krystyna” spared no one.
She spared the children, but explained to them plainly what caring for the health of children means to Bolesławiec residents taking part in the Finale: a dirty political vendetta. The committee gathered opponents of the president, seething with revenge, while he, in order to stay afloat, dressed himself up as a saint and made a fool of himself. The councilors said they would collect donations, but hid away in their warm homes, as malicious observers noted, and Via thought only about promoting itself. You see, children, who collected money for you in Bolec? Bad people.
And we have a tough nut to crack, because if any of these people now says, “We worked hard, sacrificed our free time and money, and committed ourselves to this wholeheartedly,” “Krystyna” will reply: “But it was only for your own promotion or to respond to a political opponent’s move. Your intentions were selfish, and you undertook this effort for base motives.”
And what should one say to such a Krystyna, apart from the few insults that naturally spring to the lips of us bad, selfish and greedy fools? This: she would not have said it to our faces on January 11 during the Finale. She was not there with us.
Bernard put it very aptly on one of the forums when he was attacked for never having supported the Orchestra and now defending it. He wrote that he had taken part in it when it was organized at his secondary school some time ago, and that experience caused him to change his mind.
It is precisely participation that silences criticism. “Krystyna,” or the editor together with the portal’s owner, could have traveled those several hundred kilometers from Kraków and done something for Bolesławiec.
Perhaps, seeing things up close, they would not have noticed the bad intentions they attributed to us? Because how else can one explain that these bad people, thinking only about political payback, promoting themselves and revenge, organized something so positive and good?
What did we gain by making fools of ourselves during this Orchestra? We know what it was; it could be felt in the atmosphere of being together, in joint action for the good of another person, a small child who was receiving our help at that very moment. In the need to be useful, to be needed by another human being. Perhaps it lasted only briefly, but at that moment all bad intentions, if they had ever existed, became insignificant and ridiculous. The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity was playing within us. And even if we are not always like that, on that day we were simply good people.
Grażyna Hanaf