The Debrief

Anyone who’s been to Poland and to Warsaw in particular, has probably seen the massive palm tree that sits in the middle of Rondo de Gaulle’a in the capital’s downtown.

The artist behind the project, Joanna Rajkowska, is now back with another urban sculpture on the newly refurbished Five Corner Square in the heart of Warsaw.

The sound you can hear is that of a song thrush’s heartbeat inside its egg, a blue marvel of nature. The egg has a name: it is “Hatchling. Song Thrush”. It measures a staggering 3 metres long and is over 2 metres tall as it is wide.

John Beauchamp braves the summer heat and meets up with Joanna Rajkowska and architect Michał Kempiński by the sculpture in downtown Warsaw.

In this episode of The Debrief we take a look at an exhibition of Polish women’s design.

“Looking Through Objects. Women in Contemporary Polish Design” is on at the Nomus museum of contemporary art in Gdańsk.

The exhibition presents the profiles of 16 Polish female designers working at the intersection of product design, collector’s design, handicraft and art.

Debrief host John Beauchamp meets one of the curators in the studio, Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka.

This is Debrief Extra, your espresso shot of cultural news from Poland and beyond!

Debrief team member Jarosław Kociszewski speaks with Polish-Belarusian historian Ihar Melnikau about shared Polish-Belarusian history and a new book in the works on a sinister episode in Belarus’ past.

Hosted by John Beauchamp

More from John and the Debrief team coming soon to your podcast feed!

Meet Dorota Kozarzewska, a bush guide and expedition organiser who has been taking Polish and international tourists on safaris for over twenty years.

In 1996, she was the first Polish woman to graduate from a bush guiding school in South Africa. Runs Moremi Africa, taking guests on tailor-made safaris. Author of several photographic exhibitions, as well as the author of the book “Mama Busz” (Bush Mama) written about her work in Africa so far.

Dorota lived for nine years on the tropical island of Zanzibar. She divides her time between her beloved Warsaw, mountain trails and observing animal life across Africa. Dorota Kozarzewska meets host John Beauchamp in the studio in Warsaw.

More about the people mentioned during the podcast.

• Richard Leakey
• Dian Fossey
• Roots & Shoots
• Dorota’s TEDx talk on Elephant Matriarchs

A new book recently published in Poland explores the living memory of Polish CBOWs, or ‘Children Born of War’.

Debrief host John Beauchamp meets Dr Jakub Gałęziowski to talk about his book ‘Understated Biographies’ which was written thanks to research on the topic of Polish children who were born as a direct result of wartime activity: whether by rape or consensus.

With Polish lands sometimes exchanging hands multiple times between occupying forces during World War II, CBOW stories are often related to either German or Soviet soldiers. But there are some surprises too…

“This part of history is not very well known in World War II studies,” Dr Gałęziowski says, adding that it is time that Polish CBOW narratives – often misunderstood or simply unknown – complete European research undertaken in Northern and Western Europe.

What happens when you have a caring dad who works too much but who still wants to spend as much time with his kids as possible?

Well, apart from a lack of sleep and a little bit of stress, he can always turn his attention to storytelling…

We’ve all been there. The kids demand: “tell me a story!” and your mind goes blank. Not for our guest this week though. Budding kids’ author Wojciech Bablok is in the studio with John Beauchamp for this Children’s Day episode of The Debrief.

A lot of the old and grand buildings you can still see in Warsaw nowadays were built thanks to the ingenuity and skill of a certain Marconi…

While the surname may ring a bell, we’re not talking about telephones, but about Enrico Marconi, known in Poland as Henryk, who was a prolific architect and the mastermind behind dozens of buildings built in Congress Poland.

Host John Beauchamp speaks to Jakub Frejtag from Warsaw University about the Marconi effect on Polish architecture and how it came to be that an Italian found himself in Poland back in the 19th century.

A lot of the old and grand buildings you can still see in Warsaw nowadays were built thanks to the ingenuity and skill of Henryk Marconi. He built hotels, train stations, hospitals, grand palaces for the rich and famous, numerous churches, and even a synagogue.

While a lot of the buildings Enrico Marconi constructed didn’t survive the war, some did, and can still be admired today – even if not in their original form.

The 3 May Constitution of 1791 is known as being Europe’s first modern constitution, following on from the United States two years before. At the time, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a multi-ethnic state, comprising Poles, Lithuanians, Ruthenians, Jews, Germans, Armenians and other ethnicities.

The document was revolutionary in that it established a new voting system across the country, increased the rights of the peasantry, upkept religious tolerance and abolished the liberum veto, where one vote against could bring down any legislation being debated in the Sejm.

While the effects of the new system were only in effect for under two years until the Grodno Sejm in 1793 (and ahead of the Kościuszko Uprising and the Second Partition), it is seen as progressive, a reflection of the Enlightenment ideals of the time.

John Beauchamp is in Krasnogruda on the Polish-Lithuanian border where he meets Krzysztof Czyżewski from the Borderland Foundation to talk about the 3 May Constitution and how patriotism can be given new wind thanks to a look back to the ideals of the Commonwealth: hospitality and openness.

The name of the high-school student mentioned by Krzysztof in the interview is Patryk Jankowski, who comes from a mixed-heritage Polish-Lithuanian family and who recently won the seventh edition of the Jagiellonian University’s Polish Department annual essay competition for a paper on modern-day patriotism.

A little bit of a folk twist coming up in this episode of The Debrief as we’re at the Mazurkas of The World Festival in Warsaw.

The festival is a folk celebration which lasts for four days at the end of April, with concerts, dances, singing and instrument workshops, children’s activities, even an all-night folk dance party.

One of the highlights of the Mazurkas of The World Festival is the folk instrument fair.

In this episode, host John Beauchamp meets with two folk instrument makers – Jakub Podskarbi and Edward Reszke – and also with one of the festival’s organisers and folk musician Piotr Piszczatowski.

We also listen in on one of the groups taking part in the festival, the Wesołe Mazurki children’s folk group from Warsaw’s Praga district.

This week marked 80 years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising broke out. The fight, the largest act of armed resistance by Jews in World War II, started 19 April 1943 and lasted just under a month until 16 May.

Three heads of state: Polish president Andrzej Duda, Israeli president Isaac Herzog and German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier were in Warsaw for the occasion. Steinmeier is the first-ever German head of state to be present at the commemoration in Warsaw.

“I stand before you today and ask for your forgiveness for the crimes committed by Germans here,” Steinmeier said during his speech at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw’s Muranów district.

Here on The Debrief we have looked at some of the events taking place this year. On the line John Beauchamp speaks to curator from the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Zuzanna Schnepf-Kołacz, to discuss how different narratives make up the story of the Ghetto Uprising.