1945. War and Peace (1945. Wojna i pokój)

Magdalena Grzebałkowska
published by Agora, Warsaw

Reports from the heart of darkness
Will I be able to understand and describe it all? – the authoress asks – Me, who did not live in these terrifying times?
When people shoot one another as if they were wild game.
When a pampered 18-year-old girl, who just recently played the piano and read The Deluge, gets involved in looting.
When some mount their horses and go away, and those who have been waiting on the other side of the road get off their carts, enter the just-vacated kitchens, touch the still warm stove, lie down on still warm pillows.
When silence could be of use so that 450,000 escapees from Eastern Prussia could hear the cracking ice on the Vistula Lagoon.
Magdalena Grzebałkowska (1972) is trying to imagine this silence and after 70 years makes us hear this cracking ice and feel a cold shiver at the thought of this terrible time between war and peace.
Katarzyna Nowak