Just numbers. (Kris Kotarski, Warszawa, May 2009)

Spiegel probably summed it up best: “War memorials are meant to honor the dead — not lead to more of them.”

Yet, two years ago, when the Estonian government decided to remove a Soviet war memorial from the center of Tallinn to a military cemetery on the outskirts of the capital, that is exactly what happened. The protestors turned violent, a man was stabbed, and the World War II casualty list ticked up one more time.

Some, especially in western Europe, were surprised by the ferocity of the reaction. For those east of what once was the Iron Curtain, such moments are not surprising at all.

A couple of days ago, I read Boris Dolgin’s OpenDemocracy essay grappling with the politics and motives behind such outbursts. The photo represents my personal views on the matter.

It’s a headstone at the Soviet war memorial in Warsaw, a city where the Red Army stood on the sidelines as the Germans brutally put down an uprising in 1944. For that reason (and the ensuing Soviet dominance which lasted until 1989) some see such sites as a historical affront to Poland’s historical memory.

Me? I see it as fitting testament to the treatment of human beings by Stalin’s regime. #519… no age, rank, or explanation. No mother, father, brother or sister. A single red star is all that is left of him, while his commanders and their successors argue about how to best claim credit in his name…

The twilight dim. (Kris Kotarski, Warszawa, January 2007)

Every bridge in Warsaw was destroyed in World War II, along with most city neighbourhoods on the western side of the river. My grandfather was born in 1929 so he was too young to fight in the war, but he was, quite literally, a bridge builder, and he has a hand in every bridge spanning the Vistula, including the one above, completed in 2000.

First, he was a university student, trekking through the rubble to the central city planning office where he worked as he completed his engineering degree. Then, as an architect, he moved from bridge to bridge, watching the city slowly came back to life. As the years passed, the city evolved out of the rubble, sometimes taking on pleasing forms and sometimes reflecting the gray reality of Poland’s political predicament. Through it all, my grandfather kept on building bridges, one after the other, so that his grandson could someday take a tram, and cross the Vistula scarcely giving it a second thought…

The Bridge Builder - Will Allen Dromgoole (1900)

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim, near,
“You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you this bridge at the evening tide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head:
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him.”

Faith? (Kris Kotarski, Warsaw, April 2009)