Or how I learned to stop worrying and love my identities

By Kinia Adamczyk

The Link, Concordia University Independent newspaper

Twelve intellectually stimulating days. Eleven sleepless nights. A Newsweek senior editor, a Globe and Mail journalist, history, literature, politics, art scholars and 33 students. Friendship. And finally, some much-needed time to think about my identity as a first-generation Polish immigrant in North America. The setting? Alberta's beautiful Rocky Mountains.

We embarked on this journey to discover more about our common background at this second edition of a conference series named Poland in the Rockies. What we shared, beyond our interest in “things Polish,” were questions about the complexity of identity. “I found out that I am not alone, that there are many other people like me out there... born again Poles with a dual Polish-Canadian identity. Educated and assimilated Poles that still have a strong connection to Poland,” said Eric Bednarski, a 29-year-old documentary filmmaker from Nova Scotia.

We held our breaths as we got a first-hand account from Adam Szostkiewicz, a journalist and activist during the ‘80s anti-communist movement in Poland, Solidarity. This former political prisoner now writes freely for Polityka, something of a Polish version of Maclean’s magazine. During Solidarity times, it wasn't unusual to get shoved into a truck and to receive a good beating just for wearing the movement's pin.

Andrew Nagorski, a senior editor at Newsweek, said "if [a program] like this had been offered at the time when I was a student, I’m sure I would have jumped at the opportunity." Between lectures, we sat on the grass in the shade, laughing at some of his reporting anecdotes from around the world. Nagorski gained international fame after Soviet authorities expelled him from the country in 1982 for his “enterprising reporting.” He launched the Polish edition of Newsweek in 2001.

We shared laughs, but also feelings of sorrow, as we looked back at the past. Stan Oziewicz, journalist at the Globe and Mail, told us the story of his father, a Second World War bomber pilot. After fighting under the Allies, Officer Mieczyslaw Oziewicz felt, like hundreds of Poles, betrayed by the Yalta Agreement, under which Poland's faith was handed over to Stalin's Soviet Union. "It was particularly painful and bitter for people like my parents," explained the journalist, "who, while Hitler's forces were storming through Poland's western frontier in September of 1939, were later rounded up from their homes in eastern Poland and sent by rail boxcars to Stalin's slave-labour camps in northern Russia and Soviet Central Asia."

Sweat almost dripped from our foreheads as we tackled the translation assignment proposed by Bill Johnston, one of the leading translators of Polish literature in North America. We discovered the challenges he faces every day as he tries to preserve the cultural references of the works he translates whilst keeping them accessible to English readers. "The focus on language and culture through the lens of Polish literature was a very interesting day of lectures for me, precisely because language and our definitions are so intricately tied with our identity," said Kasia Wisniewska, who recently graduated from English literature at McGill.

The romantic in me thrived as we watched the only colour pre-war footage of Poland in the short film Land of my Mother, narrated by Eve Curie, the daughter of the famous scientist Marie Curie. Through her bright red lips and French-tainted English, Curie gracefully guided us through the still undestroyed monuments of Warsaw, Gdansk and Krakow, among others.

We watched in solemn silence as a participant of the program, Alexi Marchel, performed a dramatic reading of Inside a Gestapo Prison 1942-44: The Letters of Krystyna Wituska. This young woman, although condemned to death after being captured by the German secret police, was full of life, warmth and optimism. “I am first a human being, and only then a Pole,” wrote Wituska in one of her letters, which were translated from Polish by the author and researcher Irene Tomaszewski.

At night, we sat around campfires with the speakers, talking about the Kaczynski brothers, who are at the head of Poland now, about the Jagiellonian University's beautiful library in Krakow, which I would like to visit one day, and about the future of a country some of us haven't yet gone back to. We sang songs and danced and laughed about our cultural idiosyncrasies.

The question of my identity is an interior battlefield I've been leading for the last 17 years. The seminar was not only an intellectual journey, but also an opportunity to accept my dual identity by discovering people who share similar experiences and interests. Who needs sleep when you're celebrating new-found peace?

The next Poland in the Rockies conference will be held in the summer of 2008. It is open to students of all backgrounds interested in “things Polish.” Visit http://www.polandintherockies.com/ for more information.

Kinia Adamczyk