A Tragic Tragedy

Just twelve months ago, this was a tragedy with a capital T. Monika Olejnik cried. Reason slept, and national demons awoke. Fear, hatred, humiliation, a sense of grievance and injustice. Officially, one could only be serious and compassionate. Anyone who felt otherwise kept silent for the sake of peace.

Bolesławiec was shrouded in mourning, and anyone who did not observe it, or was suspected of not doing so, could receive an SMS from a municipal official calling them a beast. Local portals, both larger and smaller, changed their appearance to a mourning theme. Some suspended advertising, possibly against the advertisers’ wishes. But who would ask for their consent in the face of the Tragedy? The local television station also produced a black-and-white opening sequence, but only on Monday, April 12, because, as always, it was closed at the weekend. People who had planned weddings, christenings, engagements and other joyful celebrations for That Day, and could not cancel their venue reservations, were afraid that others would treat them as though they were desecrating the graves of heroes. On that tragic Saturday, no one dared to celebrate, because the nation was suffering.

And the mourning continued without end. A week after the disaster, women at the hairdresser’s were preparing for other joyful celebrations and said they were going out to have fun and did not care at all what people thought. Yet somehow they lowered their voices nervously and looked around to see who was listening. They were afraid of hurting someone’s religious and national feelings. It must be admitted that those with Catholic-Polish sentiments were the most aggressive. They were capable of stigmatizing anyone they deemed disrespectful toward the victims.

One could not allow oneself even the slightest critical remark about the deceased president. Squeezed to the limits of endurance by a corset of pain and the only supposedly proper ways of expressing it, we let out “anti-national,” foul-smelling burps about cold Lech beer, and explained the abbreviation PiS as “fly away and get lost.” Or we wondered who had switched the body in the presidential coffin, because a quarrelsome and not particularly outstanding politician had flown to Smolensk, while the remains of a statesman and national hero worthy of burial at Wawel had been brought back. There was no room in the public sphere to express either sadness or indifference toward the deaths of strangers. We had not even had time to consider what we truly felt before we were told what we ought to feel.

Twelve months have passed. Time has tested last year’s mourners. At times, their complete change of attitude toward the tragedy is staggering. The administrator of a website who, twelve months ago, threatened to moderate improper, disrespectful posts about the plane crash now writes, like some users of his portal, that he is not interested in the Smolensk topic and adds: “As long as it doesn’t rain, we should continue the barbecue season, plus some kind of party.”

It turned out that the pain experienced so intensely last year had been a pose, an imposed emotion with which no one had confronted themselves. That was simply how one was expected to behave. To express grief as a group and cry as a group. Today this causes disgust, but no one still talks about it. We succumbed to tragic hysteria, and some of the most despairing mourners, as it turns out, made fools of us.

A year has passed, and it is worth asking ourselves what we feel. The burial of Maria and Lech Kaczyński at Wawel was meant to honor the Polish people, but it became an empty gesture. Because the burial decision was imposed from above. People had no chance either to reflect on it or to make it. And in this way, paradoxically, citizens were shown complete disrespect. We learned that, yes, we were allowed to grieve, but we were not allowed to decide.

Tragedies can teach communities many good things. But only tragedies experienced consciously. Ones that are discussed. When people can talk freely about their feelings, without hysteria and imposed correctness. We were not given such a chance a year ago. Perhaps we should give it to ourselves this year.

Grażyna Hanaf