DIALOGUE AND UNIVERSALISM No. 7.

-9/2004

Wiadyslaw Tatarkiewicz

REIVIINISCENCES: 1939-1944
ABSTRACT This is a reconstructionfrom personal memoriesof philosophy's fate during the occupation yearswhen education and all research work had to be pursued in secret. Key words: occupation years of leading Polish philosophers, including: Miciriski, B.; Gralewski, J.; Milbrandt, M.; and Salamucha, J.

In the last pre-war academic year of 1938/39 we met in a small group at a weekly philosophy seminar at Warsaw University, held in the evening when the campus in Krakowskie Przedmiescie began to be empty. In this group were senior students, both male and female, but the majority were graduates busy with their own research projects. This was a unique gathering: for the past twenty-five years I have not once encountered such a harmonious team of talented and cultured people. There were in the seminar students of ancient and modern history, ethics, and aesthetics, all also displaying considerable literary and even artistictalent. Primarily focused on the humanities, their work was complementary to that of the Warsaw School of Logic. They not only knew how to compile scholarly essays but also wrote well, which made them perfect propagators of philosophical culture and a new, fresh force in philosophy. Each one of this group pursued different interests, but all shared the same serious attitude to their work. Typical for this team was also an inherent human warmth, a closeness which at times even bloomed into personal friendships. This world ended with the outbreak of the war in 1939 and hardly anyone of this group is alive today. Among the first to go were Michal Wasilewski and Jerzy Siwecki, both drafted as reserve officers when the war started and both were killed on the front.
* First published in Polish in Przeglqd Filozoficzny [Philosophical Review], 1939-1946/annual file 42, book 3-4, pp. 342-348; and in"Droga do filozofii" i inne rozprawy filozoficme ["The Path to Philosophy" and Other Philosophical Essays], abr, ed. Wiadyslaw Tatarkiewicz, Warszawa: PWN 1971, pp. 174-182.

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Michal Wasilewski was born on August 24, 1906. He spent his childhood in eastern Belarus and later moved to Warsaw, where he lived with his parents opposite to the Holy Cross Church in the close vicinity of Warsaw University. At the University he first got a degree in Polish studies, then went on to study philosophy, which in his case was more an emotional than a rational decision. A dramatic event during his youthful years (he accidentally shot a dearly-loved cousin on a hunting trip) had left a scar none of his subsequent successes could heal. The healer proved to be philosophyto a large extent due to the special warmth and friendliness present in the Warsaw philosophical milieu in those days. Michal Wasilewski went on to a philosophy assistant professorship; his main interestand talentwas historical analysis. He specialized in the history of modem philosophy, especially Malebranche, but never finished a large monograph on the French thinker. The only fragment that was ever printed appeared in 1937 in Przeglqd Filozoficzny [Philosophical Review] under the title Kartezjusz i Malebranche [Descartes and Malebranche]. Michal Wasilewski was killed on September 17 1939 near Kriwa Luka in the district of Czortkow. Jerzy Siwecki specialized in two fields: philosophy and classical philology. He, too, was a philosopher-historian, specializing in the Middle Ages. He was an outstanding medievalist, especially owing to his deep knowledge of old scholastic sources. Jerzy Siwecki was a devout Catholic and his scholastic studies harmonized well with his personal beliefs. In 1932 he published Zagadnienia filozoficzne w "Konsolacji" Boecjusza [Philosophical Issues in Boethius' "Consolation"] in Philosophical Review, following this up in 1935 with Rozumowanie praktyczne i prawda praktyczna u Arystotelesa [Artistotle's Practical Reasoning and Practical Truth]. In 1934 he also published an essay on Artistotle's action and creation concepts in Ksiqga Pamiqtkowa Gustawa Przychockiego [Gustaw Przychocki's Memorial Book]. Before the war Siwecki worked in a grammar school in the Warsaw suburb Bielany. Immersed in his teaching work and active in a number of Catholic youth organizations, he nevertheless found time for his own scholarly pursuits. He had completed the first fragment of a large projecta study on Artistotle's classifications of skills and medieval Aristotelianswhen he set out to a war from which he never returned. Another of this group, Boguslaw Micitiski, died soon after. Was he also a war victim, though indirectly: he managed to fiee the German occupation to France, where unfortunately the hardships of refugee life soon brought on TB. Micinski was born on April 23, 1911, in his family estate Mokra in the Baltecki district of Poland's south-eastern Podole region. Still a child when his family was forced to leave the estate, he spent his school years in Bydgoszcz, later going on to Warsaw University, where he started off with history of art and subsequently turned to philosophy.

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Boguslaw Micinski was a philosopher and a poet. Typically for this circle, he masterfully combined philosophical and literary skills. In 1933 he published a volume of poetry entitled Chleb z Gietsemane [Bread from Gethsemane]. 1937 saw a collection of essays under the joint title Podroze do Piekiel [Journeys to Hell], in which he charmingly mixed poetry with philosophy, taking readers on a journey from Karl May and Gulliver's Travels to Descartes. His philosophy graduation thesis, Deformacje rzeczywistosci w literaturze [Deformations of Reality in Literature] was lost in the war melee. In 1937/39 Micinski studied in Paris and Grenoble, where he concentrated on Cousin. Like Wasilewski and Siwecki, he was never to finish a major work, the only memento of his French years, a funny and masterful essay entitled Dylizans filozoficzny [Philosophical Stagecoach], which appeared in 1938 in the Przeglqd Warszawski [Warsaw Review]. After returning to Poland Micinski became literature section head in the Polish Radio, doubling as a second assistant professor in Warsaw University's philosophy faculty. In 1942 he published A Portrait of Kant, in which he ruminated on old age facing death. A Portrait of Kant was Micinski's most mature work, extraordinary both in the literary and psychological sense; its deep insight into growing old was probably explained by the fact that its author had himself looked death in the eye. Micinski died soon after its publication, in May 1943 in Grenoble. Death was an everyday thing in Warsaw at the time, nonetheless news of this one shocked everyonegone was not only a man of great talent but also a person of great charisma, loved and respected by all. Luckily a large part of Micinski's essays, reviews and foreign correspondence was saved and saw publication in 1970. We gathered again in October 1939Warsaw wasn't besieged anymore and many of us who had fled to other parts of the country had returned. The university was in ruins and closed, therefore we met in my house. Some of us had gone but we were still quite numerous. The meeting's first paper. Historical Disaster and Despair, dwelt on our most recent experiences. After that we met every week on Mondayt evening, dispersing shortly before curfew. We met in private flats we felt safe in Sucha, Krucza, Wspolna and Chlodna. Our later themes had less to do with our contemporary timesto the contrary, they led us far away from our world. As I recall we started with Bergson and the Vienna Circle, going on to Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Wladyslaw Dawid. We stuck to these Monday meetings even during the worst times, when you really had to watch out not to fall into Germans' hands. We held over 150 such sessions during the war yearsfor many of us these Monday nights were what we looked forward to all week.

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We lost Jan Mosdorf during the first winter. He was arrested and imprisoned in Pawiak*, and never released. After a year he was taken to Auschwitz, where he died in the autumn of 1944 after on ordeal which lasted four years. Born in 1904, he was one of our group's senior members. He was widely known as a staunch nationalist, socially radical politician; pasted as a youth activist he was also quite popular with the young generation of the day. In 1934 tragic circumstances forced him into hiding, but when he returned to Warsaw his head was full of ideas, plans and historical projects. Jan Mosdorf strongly believed the world, and particularly Poland, was in need of social, political, economic and intellectual reconstruction, but he had no political ambitions, choosing to devote himself to writing. In 1938 he published a synthesis of his main historiosophical and social ideas in two volumes entitled Wczoraj i jutro [Yesterday and Tomorrow]. His chief field, however, was philosophy. In 1938 he was busy preparing for print his Ph.D. thesis Comte's Historiosophy, whose fragment titled Was Comte a Positivistl he still saw in print in Philosophical Review in 1938. Auschwitz returnees often became quite emotional recalling his conduct in the campespecially his cheerfulness, patience and courage, which was often a source of spiritual strength to fellow inmates. The war also took Jan Gralewski. Gralewski's interests lay closest to Micinski's, he, too, walking a line between philosophy and art. Born on March 3, 1912 in Warsaw, he also attended his hometown university. He took a long time to graduate, having to support himself and his mother. When he did hand in his M.A. thesis, however, it was an excellent one. Its subject verged on Micinski's Deformacja rzeczywistosci w sztuce [Deformations of Reality in Art], alas it went lost during the war years. In 1938/1939 Gralewski was in Paris on a French government scholarship, working on a second aesthetics thesis. He managed to return to Poland two weeks before the war broke outbut the suitcase in which he'd packed the manuscript and which he had sent separately, never turned up. Unfortunately only small fragments of Gralewski's works have survived, among them Sztuka organizowana przestrzeni [The Art of Spatial Planning], published by Arkady, and Wspolczesnosc w sztuce wspolczesnej [The Present Day in Contemporary Art] in Zycie Sztuki [Art Life]. During the war Gralewski wrote essays but his other concerns, especially his involvement with the resistance, did not allow him to concentrate on a major theme. A foreign courier for the Polish underground, he perished along with general Sikorski in the memorable 1943 plane crash off Gibraltar. Our Monday meetings continued despite these losses, and even went into a new phase: in 1943 we switched from ad-hoc papers and essays to our collecTranslator's note: Pawiakprison in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, main detention and interrogation place for captured anti-fascists (the name comes from its location in Pawia Street). Known for its harsh rigors and frequent executions.

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tive work, Zagadnienia fdozofii [Philosophical Issues]. We divided the chapters among ourselves and every week one would be read and discussed. The book's first part was a rundown of philosophical disciplines, the second dealt with metaphysics, the third with cognition theory, the fourth with ethics, the fifth with aesthetics, the final part was a review of major philosophical trends over the ages. We missed some of our old friends on the project, but new people appearedmost notably the Rev. Professor Jan Salamucha, settled in Warsaw after surviving Sachsenhausen and Dachau, and doctor Jan Lempicki, both Warsaw University alumni and earlier Philosophy Seminar members. We all worked hard on the book and in the summer of 1944 our publisher Stefan Dipp received the first three parts. And then came the Warsaw Uprisingand took away almost everyone in this circle. Among the dead were Mieczyslaw Milbrandt, the Rev. Saiamucha, dr. Lempicki, Alicja Szebekowa and Danuta Krzeszewska. Mieczyslaw Milbrandt was born on February 2, 1915, in L6dz, where he attended grammar school. He enrolled at Warsaw University in 1934 and graduated in 1938. Immediately afterwards he received a teaching post at the university's philosophy faculty, a position he retained when the university operated in secret during the war years. Later he was given a history of philosophy assistant professorship although he had passed no qualifying exams and did not even have a PhD. Milbrandt also lectured at the Western Territories University and taught philosophy propedeutics in underground at grammar school courses until his death in the Rising. Mieczyslaw Milbrandt began to publish at an early age, not even out of university. In 1937 and 1938 he printed philosophical papers in periodicals like Plon [Upright], Narod i Panstwo [Nation and State], in Prosto z Mostu [The Eyes] and Polska Zbrojna [Armed Poland]. These were popular features written for money, nonetheless interesting owing to their subject matter and the author's personal standpoints. Among them was in Obrona mysli [Defense of Thought], another, aimed against elevating thought above all else, was tided Niebezpieczenstwo teorii naukowych [The Pitfalls of Scientific Theory]. In yet another, Sceptycyzm a koniecznosc swiatopoglqdu [Skepticism and the Need for a World Outlook], Milbrandt argued that some kind of rational construction was indispensable to life despite skepticism's truths and temptations. There was also an article on Religion and Culture, in which he claimed religion was rooted in the world's mystery and hence had to come in conflict with culture, which strove to demystify the world. In Potrojne zycie [Triple Life] Milbrandt argued that our reality consisted not only of the material world but also our dreamand that dreams also constituted a "third" reality. In Wiedza o cziowieku [Knowledge About Man] he joined Carrel in stressing civilization's ill adjustment to human needs. In Powaga zycia [Serious Living] he supported personal world outlooks and loyalty to personal views. Milbrandt's interests wandered to other spheres, in-

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eluding the theory of time, the relativity concept and new physical and astronomical schoolsbut he inadvertently wound up with his main subject humanity in all its greatness and baseness. Milbrandt ceased writing these articles in 1938, having found other subsistence means. At about that time he also began a book on ethics under the working title Cnota a obowiqzek [Virtue and Duty]. Along came the war, however, and the times were unconducive to writing. Milbrandt made some notes for the book but never actually finished itand what he had put down was lost in the Warsaw Rising. The only survivor was Trzy szkice [Three Sketches], found among the ruins of his flat in Warsaw's Mokotow district and published in 1945 in Nauka i Sztuka [Science and Art] Nos 1 and 2/3. Three Sketches are all that remains of Mieczyslaw Milbrandt's work. During the war Milbrandt showed himself as a talented speaker. He lectured, held private readings and sat on various literary and philosophical teams and committees. He was a man of many talents, science being one. He worked well and extremely fast. He would sometimes do nothing at all for a lengthy period of time, only to finish in a few hours what others needed weeks for. And he worked with an ease typical of the talented. Perfectly versed in modern philosophy's precise methods, he nevertheless held them in small value, his interests rather wandering to issues such instruments could not fathom. His history of philosophy lectures captivated students, nonetheless this too was not a major pursuit. Milbrandt's true love was contemporary philosophy, which in all its diversity he knew, understood and "felt" like perhaps nobody of his generation in Poland. Mieczyslaw Milbrandt displayed a unique feeling for the signs of his times, in which he had witnessed the incomprehensibility of life and the tragic side of human existence. During the war he met Kierkegaard and Heidegger and was strongly influenced by their philosophy, which he found moving precisely in the direction he was going. Milbrandt knew how to condense Heidegger's muddled and poorly comprehensible statements into a fundamentally simple picture of human life with its daily routine and ceaseless strife. He spoke about this frequently and it was impossible to listen to him unemotionally. He was also the first propagator of existentialism in Poland, and although he only did this verbally, traces of his activity in this respect remain to this day. Milbrandt's basic concept was, I believe, that the world was a mysterious and disquieting place and that this unease gave birth to philosophy. According to him civilization quenched fear but also diminished the spirit, besides which the rational approach was insufficient to fathom the world's secretsas were all man-invented cults and magical rites. Furthermore, humans needed personal philosophies and world outlooks but had no reliable means to produce them ("whoever doesn't philosophize with all his heart, guts, blood, with the year that was and the following day, is most often only articulating words without content").

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Neither can the world's mysteries be investigated by science. Scientific theories, however, are dangerous as presented to the masses they quickly evolve from hypothesis to dogma and become a strong influence of everyday lifeas was the case with Ereud's theories or the relativity theory. Einally, most important for humanity is not existence in general but its own, with its worries, fear of death and stifling routine, from under which we can barely discern real life as desired by our true nature. "We don't know where [life] is going or at what stage it is now. Its beginnings have disappeared from view and its end is not yet in sight." Mieczyslaw Milbrandt's end came much sooner. He joined the Warsaw Uprisers on the first day of the fighting (August 1, 1944) and already on August 8 took part in an attack on the Parliament building in which he was wounded. He died from the wounds a day later. The Rev. Jan Salamucha was born in 1903 and before the war was a professor at Cracow's Jagiellon University. In the first phase of the war he was an army chaplain on the Warsaw front, returning to Cracow with a war wound and a Cross of Valor. A few days later he and a group of university professors were taken to Sachsenhausen and later Dachau together with other university professors. He returned in 1941; his body was almost wrecked, but resumed his work as soon as his health improved. Eather Salamucha settled in Warsaw, where he remained until the end of the war as Vicar of St. James' Church, simultaneously lecturing in philosophy to throngs of eager intellectuals and teaching at the local seminary. Eather Salamucha also lectured at the Western Territories University and held public readings, "doubling and tripling to meet his daily tasks as priest, professor, philosopher and wise counselor"'. The Rev. Salamucha graduated from Warsaw University's philosophy faculty and the philosophy section of the theology faculty under St. Kobylecki, J. Lukasiewicz and St. Lesniewski. His major themes were logic and history of philosophy, and he authored a number of works: Pojqcie dedukcji u Arystotelesa i Tomasza z Akwinu [The Deduction Concept: Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas] in 1930, Logika zdan ogolnych u W. Ockhama [W. Ockham's General Sentence Logic] in 1935, and Pojawienie siq zagadnien antynomialnych na gruncie logiki sredniowiecznej [The Emergence of Antinomianism in Medieval Logic] in 1937. He was among those who attempted to combine scholastics with logistics. At the 1936 Polish Philosophers' Congress in Cracow Eather Salamucha delivered three papers which, together with J. Lukasiewicz's leading paper and contributions by I. Bocheiiski and E. Drewnowski appeared in print in 1937 under the title, Mysl katolicka wobec logiki wspolczesnej [Catholic Thought and Contemporary Logic].
' The Rev. K. M. Michalski in Przeglqd Filozoficzny [Philosophical Review] XLII, 1946 and Wspomnienia o filozofach zmarlych 1939-1945 [Reminiscences of Deceased Philosophers 1939-1945], Cracow 1946.

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The Rev. Salamucha continued working throughout the war years, mostly preparing for print a book titled O chrzescijanskim stylu w filozofti [On Christian Style in Philosophy]. Most of the typescript survived and was to be published, but hasn't been as yet. In the Warsaw Uprising Father Salamucha fought in a large apartment building between Mianowskiego, Uniwersytecka and Wawelska Streets. He died as a chaplain on August 8, 1944. Also killed on that dayand in the same buildingwas Jan Lempicki. Fully qualified as an academic teacher, Lempicki preferred to teach elementary school children. He specialized in Polish literature but possessed a broad philosophical knowledge, best proof of which is his largest work, Historiozofia H. Taine'a [H. Taine's Historiosophy], published in 1938. Shortly before the war Lempicki began a work on Boleslaw Prus' and his ethical views, which, as he claimed, were based on a vast array of older and newer philosophical texts, differed from all hereto ethics and should therefore not be regarded as utilitarian or eudaemonistic. This he expounded in 1942 during an unforgettable lecture entitled "Madzia Brzeska's Ethical Values". It would be sadand an irretrievable lossto know that no copies of the writings of this synthetic, independent and at the same time meticulous and cautious mind (especially the more recent titles and the Prus text) have survived until today. Alicja Szebekowa (nee Tyszkiewicz) personified love of philosophy, for which she always found time in spite of absorbing family, social and charity duties (supplemented by military tasks during the war). Most of our Monday meetings took place at her home. Alicja Szebekowa was preparing a monograph on Zeromski . A woman of great culture, a big heart and a staunch character, she died as a Home Army officer on Warsaw's Pius street barricade. Danuta Krzeszewska was the youngest of our group. Born in Warsaw on December 18, 1919, she was a university freshman when the war broke out. A medic during the fighting for Warsaw, she was stationed at the university campus on one of the final days of the fighting, when a bomb hit the building in which we had our philosophical seminar. There were books in the building which needed to be salvaged but the shellfire was so dense that none dared to leave their sheltersall except Danuta, who went to the building and began to remove the books. Others soon followed suit. For this and other acts of courage Danuta Krzeszewska was decorated with a Cross of Valor. No one will ever know how many people she helped save from danger during the war, frequently taking big risks herself. In the Warsaw Uprising she was a medic againand

* Translator's note: Bolesfaw Prus (real name Aleksander Glowacki, 1847-1912). Polish wri^t^er, known for his social involvement and positivistic views. ** Translator's note: Stefan Zeromski (1864-1925), Polish writer.

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was killed on September 4, 1944 aiding air-raid victims in downtown Warsaw's Zgoda Street. Danuta combined all the good traits typical of our group: intellectual culture, openness, freedom from dogma, courage, a lust for lifeand a melancholy typical of a generation doomed to perish. This generation, born immediately before and during World War One and educated in the pre-World War Two years, was truly decimated, a fact which created a generation gap in Polish philosophy. Translated by Maciej Bankowski

Wladyslaw TATARKIEWICZ (1886-1980). Philosopher, philosophy historian, aesthetician, art historian. From 1919 to 1921 Tatarkiewicz was a philosophy professor at Vilnius University, between 1921 and 1923 he held an aesthetics and art history professorship at Poznan University. From 1923 to 1961 he was a philosophy professor at Warsaw University. A member of the Warsaw Scholarly Society from 1928, the Polish Academy of Arts and Science (PAU) from 1930 to 1951 and the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) from 1956. In his work Tatarkiewicz concentrated on aesthetics, the history of philosophy and the history of art (especially modern). He has authored numerous works on ethics and his philosophy and art history lectures, which he delivered in many foreign academic centers, helped popularize the work of Polish philosophers abroad. His History of Philosophy (vol. 1-2 1931, 12th ed. 1990, vol. 3 1950, 9th edition 1990), was for many years a standard academic textbook in Poland. His other works include Stanislaw August's Artistic Rule (1919), On Happiness (1947, 9th ed. 1990), Concentration and Dreams (1951), Dominic Merlini (1955), Warsaw's Lazienki Park (1957, 3rd ed. 1972), History of Aesthetics (vol. 1-2 1960, 4th ed. 1988-89; vol. 3 1967), On Polish 17th and 18th Century Art (1966). In 1966 Wladystaw Tatarkiewicz received a State Award First Class and in 1979 a Special State Award.