Another Auld Alliance - with Poland
Richard Demarco reflects on multiple past cultural links
THE 80th CELEBRATION of VE Day revives with crystal clarity my own personal memories of that day. They are interwoven with my memories of the day when Nazi Germany Blitzkrieged Poland and the Second World War began.
Now aged 94, I belong to that generation who inherited memories of the Second World War. My personal memories dominate my thoughts now when I am deeply involved in the complex process of creating a Scottish-Polish cultural and historical dialogue linking my lifetime’s work as an artist-teacher exploring the historic routes identifying Scotland with Continental Europe.
I cannot forget that it was from Scotland that the Emperor Septimus Severus and his son Caracala governed the Roman Empire from Cramond, now a suburb of Edinburgh.
I also take seriously the fact that, during the reign of Mary Queen of Scots, 40,000 Scots were living and working in 16th century Poland. I must take into account that, in this 21st century, Scotland voted against Brexit. Thus, Poland now is on the front line sharing her borders with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, defending European democracy against Russian dictatorship.
I am conscious that my wartime memories are entangled with the 79 year history of the Edinburgh International Festival. Among these memories are those that followed the Second World War identified with the 40 years of the Cold War.
During these years, I crossed The Iron Curtain over sixty times to associate the Edinburgh Festival with the two most important European arts festivals, those of the Venice Biennale and the city of Kassel’s DOCUMENTA in West Germany.
During the Cold War and, indeed, well beyond the Cold War years to those of the 21st century, I have relied upon the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz to identify the cultural history of Scotland with that of Poland for the simple reason that Scotland’s second language is not Gaelic but Polish and that the city of Edinburgh is twinned with the Polish city of Krakow.
Perhaps more importantly, Duns, the county town of Berwickshire, is twinned with the Polish city of Zagan, and the Polish army, under the command of the heroic and inspiring General Stanislaw Maczek, was trained in the Scottish Borders region around Duns to land on the beaches of D-Day and to play a vital role in the liberation of Holland.
There now proudly stand two monuments – one in the centre of Duns and one in the centre of Warsaw – commemorating the Polish contribution to the Allied victory in Europe.
