"Cześć!"

 

Hopes Fade

BBC report...

Hopes of finding any more survivors are fading after a building collapsed in southern Poland, killing at least 65 people, rescuers said.

Some 500 people were in the trade hall in Katowice for a pigeon exhibition when the roof caved in - possibly under the weight of snow - on Saturday.

Among the dead and some 140 injured were Poles, Belgians and Germans.

President Lech Kaczynski has announced a day of mourning for what he called a "catastrophe" unprecedented in Poland.

Rescue official Leszek Suski told a news conference: "With such a low temperature the chances of finding someone alive are slim but we still have hope."

'Panic and chaos'

A central section of the roof collapsed at 1730 local time (1630GMT). A second collapse happened more than an hour later, during rescue operations.

Hundreds of rescuers with sniffer dogs worked through the night as temperatures dropped to minus 15C.

Rescuers have been blowing warm air into the wreckage to increase the chances of survival for those still inside.

Police said people had been telephoning from inside on mobile phones, reporting dead bodies near them.

But no-one had been found alive since 2100 GMT Saturday.

Officials confirmed that at least one child was among the dead.

"The dogs have located 13 places where there are bodies but it is impossible to determine how many people will be found there," local fire brigade official Kazimierz Krzowski.

Survivor's story

One of the survivors described the scenes of panic and chaos immediately after the roof collapsed.

"We heard something snap like a match breaking and people started to panic right away, realising what was happening," the unnamed survivor told private television TVN24.

"I started to run and something fell on me, others trampled over me and I was able to crawl out on hands and knees," the survivor added.

Many people, some clutching head wounds, milled around ambulances.

Some of the victims were in serious or critical condition, officials said.

New building

The cause of the disaster is not yet certain.

Jacob Parade, a journalist with TVN24 in Poland, told the BBC the collapse was a surprise as the hall - built in the late 1990s - was so new.

The fire brigade and police said the weight of snow on the roof was responsible.

But the building's manager told Polish TV that snow had been regularly cleared from the roof.

This was backed up by at least two people in BBC interviews.

One woman whose father had been at the scene, Sascha Kraus, said there had been little snow on the roof.

Graf Pietro also told the BBC the snow on the roof was not heavy and that those responsible for clearing it had done a good job.

Another theory is that the extreme cold caused steel beams to fail.

There were more than 120 exhibitors from countries across Europe at the Pigeon 2006 fair.

Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz arrived at the scene, pledging a public inquiry into the accident.

Fifteen people died on 2 January when the roof of an ice rink collapsed under heavy snow in the southern German town of Bad Reichenhall.

In December, at least 14 people, 10 of them children, were killed when a roof collapsed at a swimming pool in the Urals region of Russia. Snowfall was again thought a possible cause.

posted by: Oborski at 12:58 | link | comments |

January 27, the date the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz was liberated, is International Holocaust Commemoration Day. How are people in Poland commemorating this event?

Michal Kubicki reports for Radio Polonia 

A tram rolling through the streets of Warsaw is one of the ways in which Poles remember the Holocaust victims.

It bears the Star of David instead of a number and takes no passengers. It is identical to the one that traveled through the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto, which was annihilated by the Nazis during World War Two. The idea of this unique commemoration came from the Warsaw-based Polish-American Shalom Foundation. Jacob Weizner.

‘This is to symbolize the people who could have taken this streetcar today had they not been exterminated. There are the souls of these people who are physically no longer with us and we don’t want them to be forgotten’.

The tram makes only one symbolic stop – at Umschlagplatz in the centre of Warsaw, a square from which Nazis began sending Jews to death camps in 1942.

Outside Warsaw, the main commemorations take place at the former Auschwitz camp in southern Poland, the symbol of the Holocaust. Alicja Bialecka from the State Museum of Auschwitz

‘As every year lots of people are coming to Auschwitz on this day for the commemoration, former prisoners and groups of students with their teachers from the whole region. Many people in the area witnessed the Marches of Death shortly before the liberation of the camp and the memory of the Holocaust is very important for them.

The Shalom Foundation has also called on Poles to light candles in their windows to remember the Holocaust victims.

The Catholic Church joined in the appeal, with special letters to the faithful from both Cardinal Glemp, the Primate of Poland, and the archbishop of Krakow Stanislaw Dziwisz. The latter, the former personal secretary of the Polish Pope, called on believers to reflect on the suffering of our elder brothers in the faith’.
Jacob Weizner of the Shalom Foundation again.

‘The purpose is two-fold, not only to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust but also to fight against the denial of the Holocaust, also fight the new trends that promote racial, religious and ethnic discrimination’.

In Mrągowo, in the Mazurian Lake District, a young historian Mariusz Lupkowski with a group of people has embarked on a project aimed at commemorating the site of a former Jewish cemetery which was destroyed by the Nazis.

‘Our initiative is ecumenical in spirit. We want to show that we can do something important for the local community and overcome existing barriers, myths and prejudices regarding Jews and Judaism’.

In the nearby Olsztyn, young Germans have visited the town’s former Jewish cemetery to mark the first International Commemoration Day for victims of the Holocaust.

posted by: Oborski at 16:06 | link | comments |

Piotr Anderszewski enthrals the listener by the sheer beauty of the sounds that he conjures from the piano. Although each phrase seems to be carefully nuanced, Anderszewski captures to perfection the music's almost schizophrenic changes of mood, from the dreamy and hypnotic to the ironic and capricious. The Third Sonata is no less impressive, particularly the dynamic ecstatic account of the fugal finale. Although alternative versions of these works... have many undeniable virtues, Anderszewski outclasses his rivals in the extra degree of imagination he brings to the music.

(Five stars)
Source: BBC Music Magazine

Anderszewski's playing reveals the glories of Szymanowski's piano music like no other. He has never been one to rush into things, and these interpretations speak of lengthy deliberation about the composer's musical language and the ways of assimilating and conveying it.

Pianistic colour is paramount in these pieces, but, as Anderszewski so dynamically shows, atmosphere goes hand in hand with animated texture and a volatility of temperament that give the music a flavour - sometimes pungent, sometimes delicate and elusive - that is all its own.

Geoffrey Norris
Source: Daily Telegraph

Such music calls for a pianist of unlimited, superfine virtuosity and a complete temperamental affinity... and in Anderszewski it has surely found its ideal champion... Anderszewski's razor-sharp clarity and stylistic assurance make you hang on every one of the composer's teeming notes... Every aspect of the music's refined and energetic life is held in a blazing light from which it is impossible to escape...

All these performances have been superbly recorded.
Source: The Gramophone 

New discs from Piotr Anderszewski are precious commodities... This collection of Karol Szymanowski's most substantial works for solo piano is only the Polish-born Anderszewski's sixth solo-piano disc, but like several of its predecessors... it is a revelation, clearly the work of a master pianist who has emerged as one of the greatest of the present day, and one with the rare ability to transform whatever he plays, making it seem as if it is being heard for the first time... Great performers really can turn the everyday into something very special indeed.

(Five stars)
Source: The Guardian 

The most influential champion of the underappreciated Polish composer Karol Szymanowski was his devoted friend and countryman Arthur Rubinstein. For decades after Szymanowski's death in 1937 at 54, Rubinstein kept his idiosyncratic piano works before the public. Now Szymanowski has a new champion in the young Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski, whose riveting Virgin Classics recording of three major piano pieces should help the cause...

Mr Anderszewski plays these works with breathtaking pianistic command, keen intensity and utter involvement. It's hard to imagine that any doubts about Szymanowski's piano music will withstand the sheer impact of the performances captured here.

Source: New York Times 

The set of character pieces entitled Métopes is riveting, especially the piece called Calypso, in which Anderszewski exactly captures the contrast between Calypso's threateningly erotic music and Ulysses's dreamily nostalgic melody. The most impressive thing about Anderszewski's playing is the way he gives a sense of shape and purpose to Szymanowski's often wayward and over-rich textures. He has a wonderful way of making the climaxes seem massively impressive and yet evanescent. And how well he controls those dying-away endings, with their endless trills fading to stillness, like ripples stretching out across the surface of a pond.

(Five Stars)

Source: The Times

posted by: Oborski at 22:01 | link | comments |

posted by: Oborski at 13:50 | link | comments |

 Swearing-in ceremony of the President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński at a session of the National Assembly

posted by: Oborski at 04:21 | link | comments |

The assumption of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland by the President of Poland

 

posted by: Oborski at 04:18 | link | comments |

Participation of the President of Poland in a Holy Mass and in a ceremony of the handing over of the insignia

On 23 December 2005, the President of the Republic of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, and the First Lady attended a solemn Holy Mass for the Homeland and for the President of the Republic of Poland.

posted by: Oborski at 04:16 | link | comments |

Swearing-in ceremony of the President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński at a session of the National Assembly   On December 23 2005, the President of the Republic of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, took the oath of office before the National Assembly and assumed the post of President of the RP for a five-year term.   The swearing-in ceremony of the President of the RP was attended  by, among others, the  Speaker of the Sejm, Marek Jurek,  the Speaker of the Senate, Bogdan Borusewicz, former presidents of the RP, Lech Wałęsa and Aleksander Kwaśniewski, former speakers of the Sejm and Senate, including Wiesław Chrzanowski, Józef Oleksy, Andrzej Stelmachowski and Alicja Grześkowiak,  representatives of constitutional bodies, representatives of  churches and religious  communities, and diplomats accredited in Poland. Read more...

posted by: Oborski at 04:14 | link | comments |