Nowość w sklepie KP
CYTAT DNIA
Stanęli przed wyzwaniem dziejowym, któremu musieli sprostać, a ponieważ mieli wolę i wiarę, wyzwaniu temu sprostali.
Andrzej Mencwel, Etos lewicy
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I Know How to Make Millions |
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Jacek Kuroń
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21.10.2009 |
I’d like to tell you a story about a man whose heart was full of love and his head full of creative ideas, but all he could do for a living was make millions.
I was doing time in the block XII of Mokotów prison, when one day in early spring 1969 my cell door opened and a new prisoner was led in. He was slight, short, swarthy, black-haired and getting on in years. He looked foreign and his Polish was none too good. He introduced himself: Kowalski.
My cellmate, an ever prone to affectation craftsman from Wroclaw, jumped in:
- You’ve got no idea whose acquaintance you’ve just made: this is Jacek Kuroń himself!
The new arrival practically threw himself at me, hugging me and carrying on:
- My goodness, Mr Jacek, you’ve got no idea how happy I am to meet you! What joy to meet somebody like you; to meet such a great man! The bastards have locked me up, but I can’t complain, because it’s given me the opportunity to make your acquaintance!
He seemed beside himself with happiness and went on and on with his spiel; only to take my craftsman aside a moment later, asking:
- So who the heck is that Kuroń bloke?
In time I discovered that this was the man’s customary modus operandi.
- Every man has his price – was his oft repeated adage.
Once upon a time, Kowalski sold watered-down must to a State winery. I kept pulling his leg, joking that he must have taken the miracle in Kana too literally, but the watered-down must wasn’t the reason why he was back inside. On that previous occasion he proceeded to buy the militia, the court and the district prosecutor. He came out, but before long he was inside again. And again he proceeded to bribe the militia, the court and the district prosecutor. Should the 1968 March events never happened, Hirsz-Kowalski would no doubt have gone on to purchase the Procurator General, The High Court and The Citizens’ Militia Headquarters themselves; but with the anti-Semitic purges in progress, he was re-arrested and was inside for bribery and corruption. Once I met a militia captain, serendipitously named ‘Water;’ who himself was doing time on account of having been bought by my very own Mr Hirsz-Kowalski. Hirsz-Kowalski used to be the fellow’s name before his conversion to Christianity and I always addressed him as ‘Hirsz.’.
Hirsz spent the Second World War in a Soviet labour camp, from which he was eventually released, bare-arsed and bare-footed. Before long, he made his first million from a string of wineries, which he owned. He got arrested, and again he found himself bare-arsed and bare-footed on his release, and again proceeded to make another million. This sequence of events repeated itself over and over, until one day some kind-hearted Security Bureau functionaries tried to point out to him the error of his ways:
- Mr Kowalski, must you go on making all those millions, don’t you understand the political system we live under?
But Hirsz was undeterred:
- I don’t know anything else. Every man is good at something in this life and I’m good at making millions. I must go on making millions, because what would I do with myself otherwise? I’d lose my will to live if I didn’t!
Hirsz enjoyed a spot of philosophising. Once, as he was busily putting the state of the world to rights, Hirsz remarked:
- Take Auschwitz, Mr Jacek, will you just think about it, so many people murdered…Will you just think about it – five million dollars!
Evidently the thought of five million dead was a concept way over his head and had to be converted into the language of money.
In the run-up to his conversion Hirsz took to churchgoing to plead with Jesus:
- Dear Lord, I can believe anything and everything about you, but not that you are God. Please understand me; you are without a doubt a great man, a sage man, but I still can’t believe that you are God. I’m sure you get my drift; one Jew to another! I implore you; please send me a sign if I am to convert! In the fullness of time Hirsz did convert and spent many hours each day in prayer. He used to place a figurine of the Virgin Mary on his spread-out towel; pick up his missal (he was illiterate) and rocking to and fro prayed, kissing now the Virgin, now the missal.
To my: ‘Hirsz, I must take a leak,’ he would reply:
- Just a moment, I’ll cover the Virgin’s eyes.’
Why did he convert at all? Until the Russian invasion of 1939, Hirsz lived in a tiny provincial town in eastern Poland in a patriarchal Jewish family, complete with his wife, his father and his granddad. The family lived in a classic Jewish stetl and he didn’t even speak a word of Polish. For some reason Hirsz incurred the displeasure of the occupying Russians and was arrested. His wife, children, brothers, brothers-in-law, mother, father and granddad begged for mercy; they went up to the jail’s gate, kowtowed, pleaded and wailed, but to no avail: Hirsz was sent to a labour camp.
- I see the finger of God in my survival - Hirsz continued – because as I was doing time regardless of all their wailing, my whole family perished and I alone was spared. God willed my transportation to the labour camp because he wanted me to go on living and I must do everything in my power to carry out his wish. But how can a Jew survive in this world? To comply, I had to give up my Jewishness!
The poor man imagined that a mere act of conversion would be enough to cure him of being a Jew. And so Hirsz went to church and kept imploring Jesus to give him a sign of his divinity, because he didn’t want to live a lie. Eventually Jesus Christ appeared to him in a dream.
- He told me to touch his wounds, Hirsz went on, I felt the blood; I felt the warmth of his body. And then Jesus told me that he wanted me to carry on and to live on; and I knew that that was the sign I’d asked for and that I could get christened with a clear conscience.
Hirsz was fully aware that his incarceration was due to his Semitic origins. He asked his wife – a pure-bred Pole - to supply him with certificates confirming that their daughter was being educated in a convent school and that he was a regular churchgoer who went to confession and took communion. This was going to be his defence. Was he being naïve? Was he really?
Transl. Malgosia Skawinski
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