Poles+to+name+street+after+Janusz+Walus,+Boncza,+Morning+Star

Morning Star, Thursday April 12th 2007
=Sign of the Times=


 * Michael Boncza** //reports on a curious campaign to erase another name from Poland's post-war past.//

A curious campaign is being waged in Radom, the Polish city that gave birth to Solidarity. Local man Pawel Komosa, a self-styled social activist and campaigner, has petitioned the city council demanding that it changes the name of Janek Krasicki Street.

This is nothing particularly new – street name-changing has been an obsessive and widespread practice in Poland since the regime change of 1989.

Naturally, this kind of activity intensifies when rightwing parties like the ruling Law and Justice Party are in power.

Local people are rarely consulted and, since these are mostly ideological decisions, it is difficult to oppose them effectively.

The names most avidly replaced are those of communists, socialists, trade union activists from the 19 th and 20th centuries, progressive educators and those commemorating dates related to the labour movement.

Local budgets invariably bear the brunt of these costly and often idiotic empty political gestures, as do the local people and businesses that have to renew property deeds and documents.

Pope John Paul II now has streets named after him in practically every town in Poland, such is the prevailing feudal reverence for this son of Poland.

Janek Krasicki Street is named after an exemplary young communist and a brave soldier in the People's Guard, the communist-organised armed resistance to the Nazi occupation during World War II.

In December 1942, he was ordered to execute Boleslaw Molojec, a former commander of the Dabrowski International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War who was suspected of having assassinated the then general secretary of the communist Polish Workers Party Marceli Nowotko.

Nowotko's death has never been properly explained, but recent testimony seems to implicate the subversion unit of the right-wing Home Army.

To Komosa, the thought of a street named after a communist executioner is intolerable. He has been losing a lot of sleep over it.


 * But he doesn't simply want the name changed. Bizarrely, he is suggesting that it be renamed Janusz Walus Street. In case that name means nothing to you, he was a Polish racist emigre and the hired hand who murdered Chris Hani in 1993.**

Hani was the general secretary of the South African Communist Party, commander of the ANC armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe [spear of the nation] and the most popular figure in the country apart from Nelson Mandela.

Walus is serving a life term after South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission rejected his plea for a pardon.

Komosa's argument is that, although both men killed, Walus was justified as he was ridding the world of a communist – and a black one to boot. Komosa is, therefore, in no doubt that Walus is a "proper" freedom fighter as an internationalist in the global cause of anti-communism.

His deranged proposal is part and parcel of the wider mania sweeping post-socialist "liberated elites" from Estonia to Bulgaria.

To their credit, most people in the impoverished town of Radom could not give a monkey's and care even less if they have to pay for it. In fact, they are quite used to Janek Krasicki and many are openly fond of the name.

Komosa's proposal is as shameful as it is bigoted. It is also a sign of the times, representing an age of vengeful intolerance that is infecting the world well beyond sleepy Radom. Unfortunately, it may yet succeed.

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