05/25/2012 11:38 AM

The Miracle Next Door

Poland Emerges as a Central European Powerhouse
By Erich Follath and Jan Puhl
Germans used to think of Poland as a country full of car thieves and post-communist drabness. On the eve
of hosting the European Football Championship, however, the country has become the most astonishing
success story in Eastern Europe. Relations between Berlin and Warsaw have never been better.
There are cities that are as uninteresting as the stone they are made of, rigid and heavy, done up as stylishly
as if they had been completely untarnished by the vagaries of history. And then there are the other kinds,
the raw, rough, unfinished and exciting cities of the world.
Warsaw is one of those cities, a place that seems to crackle and groan in all of its unfinished glory. No one
would dream of calling the Polish capital a beautiful place. But how much it breathes history, how many
critical, comforting and tragic things it says about the course of time to those who not only contemplate but
also scrutinize its building blocks is evident in many of its structures. It is especially evident in the new
football stadium in the Saska Kepa quarter on the east bank of the Vistula River, the place that will transfix
billions of people on June 8, the day of the opening match of the European football championships.
Warsaw, 68 years earlier, less than a stone's throw away. Resistance fighters with the Polish Home Army
are crawling through cellars, sewer tunnels and secret underground passages, rallying against the savage
German occupiers. They strike out, armed with the courage of despair, and they manage to capture
important parts of the city. They are counting on Stalin's help, after hearing on Radio Moscow that the
Soviets have promised to support them militarily. But instead the Soviet dictator orders his troops to sit
tight and do nothing, in the exact spot where this year's football championship is to take place. Stalin has no
interest in self-confident Poles who liberate their capitals under their own steam. The Nazis massacre
180,000 Poles, and large parts of the city are reduced to rubble. The Russians eventually do liberate the
Poles, their "sister people," but not until January 1945 -- on their own terms.
In 1955, the new Communist leaders serving at Moscow's pleasure build the "Tenth Anniversary Stadium."
Sloppily constructed and soon too run-down for sporting events, for years the structure stands as a symbol
of the decay of communism. In 1983, Pope John Paul II, a superstar for the Poles, celebrates a mass in the
stadium. The choice of Karol Wojtyla to be the successor of St. Peter proves to be yet another important
nail in the coffin for the communist system.
A Pioneer and Role Model
The site undergoes yet another transformation. Counterfeit CDs and bootleg liquor are sold within the
stadium, and one of the biggest open-air markets in Eastern Europe becomes established in the stands.
Starting in the mid-1990s, almost anything can be bought there: Kalashnikovs from Russia, black-market
cigarettes from Ukraine and cheap clothes from China -- and women from all over the world. In 2008, after
the European football championship has been awarded to Poland and Ukraine, demolition of the stadium
begins.
Construction is now complete. The modern venue for the European Championship has risen from the ashes
of the old stadium, a dream in the Polish national colors, red and white, designed, ironically enough, by a
German, covered with glass and complete with floodlights, video screens and a retractable roof in case of
rain. The stadium, with a capacity for 50,000 fans, built out of the ruins, truly and conclusively oriented
toward the future, is not just a building but a symbol. With this marvelous stadium, Poland wants to show
the world its new face and prove that it has overcome the shadows of the past: the crimes of the Nazis,
Communist oppression and the chaotic capitalism of the period after the fall of communism.
The country sees itself as a pioneer and role model for the "others" in the East. It wants to become a power
in Europe and for Europe, thereby assuming what it has always believed to be its rightful place in the
world. We are a country to be reckoned with, say the Poles in Warsaw, Gdansk, Wroclaw and Krakow.
Poland is one of the world's few success stories since the fall of the Soviet bloc, a development that is
particularly noticeable in comparison with other countries in Eastern Europe. One of those is Ukraine, the
second host of the European Championship, plagued by human rights violations and ruled by an
authoritarian regime. If Poland is Europe's model pupil, Ukraine is its bad boy.
Things have been steadily improving in Poland for more than two decades. And even with other European
economies stagnating, the Polish boom continues unabated. In 2009, a year of crisis, when the German,

Italian and British economies each shrank by about 5 percent, Poland was the only country on the continent
to experience economic growth (1.7 percent). By 2011, the Polish economy was already growing by an
impressive 4.4 percent. The country's successes are on full display throughout Poland. The once-backward
agricultural country has become a giant construction site, where cranes dot the skylines of major cities and
some already boast high-tech paradises. No matter who wins the European Championship, if growth trends
in the last decades are any indicator, the Poles are already Europe's champions.
Fighting to Join the Euro
In Brussels, politicians from Warsaw were derided not too long ago as nationalistic troublemakers crowing
their absurd demands. But ever since liberal conservative Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Foreign
Minister Radoslaw Sikorski came into power in 2007, and then, in 2011, became the first administration
since the fall of communism to be democratically reelected, Warsaw has been seen as a role model. It has
long since incorporated a debt limit into its budget, and it signed the fiscal pact without further ado.
Amid speculation over Greece's future in the euro zone, the Polish government is fighting to join the
common currency. Warsaw expects to fulfill the criteria by no later than the end of 2015. To do so, it is
also prepared to give up sovereignty rights. Tusk and Sikorski want to assert themselves and assume a
leading role in the northern alliance of Europe's economically sound countries, and they have the support of
their fellow Poles. Hardly any other population is as pro-European as the Poles. In surveys, more than 80
percent say that their country has benefited from joining the European Union.
Another development is even more astonishing: the beginning of the end of a long-standing animosity.
Just as Germany and France improved relations after World War II and then became friends, the same
progression also seems possible between Germany and Poland today. Berlin is already Warsaw's biggest
trading partner. The reciprocal relationship is moving away from that of Poland serving as Germany's
factory, with its cheap labor force, toward a more equitable division of labor. In the border region, Polish
workers are no longer the only ones crossing the border for cleaning jobs and to cut asparagus. Germans are
now searching for more attractive jobs on the Polish side. Leszek Balcerowicz, one of the fathers of the
Warsaw reforms, says self-confidently that his country should set itself a new goal: "To overtake
Germany."
Rubbing Their Eyes in Amazement
Much has happened since the Potsdam Conference in 1945, since former German Chancellor Willy Brandt
kneeled at the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1970, and since the official recognition of the
Oder-Neisse border in 1990. Relations between the two neighboring countries are now better than ever, at
least officially. "I'm incapable of being angry with Angela Merkel," Tusk cooed about the German
chancellor, with whom he is on a first-name basis. She gave the laudatory speech for Tusk when he was
awarded the International Charlemagne Prize of the City of Aachen in 2010. And Foreign Minister Sikorski
no longer fears the activities of the Germans, but rather their inactivity. "When the (European) enterprise is
in trouble, you carry the greatest responsibility for getting it back on the right track," Sikorski told
SPIEGEL, referring to Germany. "You also have the greatest ability to do that."
Some are undoubtedly rubbing their eyes in amazement. Whatever happened to all the malicious clichs
and stereotypes, the insults and lack of understanding? The images and rhetoric both sides have launched at
each other in the past are still fresh in people's minds. The Germans, for example, were apt to use the
phrase "Polish economy" as a derogatory term and to assume that most of the people living "over there"
were nothing but car thieves. A typical headline in the tabloid Bild read: "Just Stolen, Already in Poland."
The Poles, for their part, were quick to dredge up the past, invoking the image of an arrogant, know-it-all
Germany, a revanchist specter that produced the likes of Erika Steinbach, the conservative president of the
Federation of Expellees, the group which represents the interests of Germans expelled from Poland, the
Czech Republic and elsewhere following World War II. Many in Poland saw Germany as a country
determined to rewrite history, as a country that was trying to turn its back on its culpability for World War
II and foster the role of the victim. They saw the expellees as merely scheming to regain ownership of their
former properties in present-day Poland.
Cosmopolitan and Courageous
Are the people on board with this newfound warmth the politicians are celebrating so demonstratively, or
are the Poles, in particular, fed up with what German journalist Klaus Bachmann called the "kitsch of
reconciliation?" Can their economic miracle and their enthusiasm for Europe survive the coming storms?
At a trendy caf in downtown Warsaw, near the former Communist Party headquarters building (now a
Ferrari dealership), we meet with the most controversial political figure in Poland.

She is a member of the Polish avant-garde, and she is dressed in black, is carrying a bright-red purse and
has a silk flower pinned to the lapel of her white blouse. Her name is Anna Grodzka, but until 2010 her
name was Krzysztof -- and she was a man. "Biologically, at least," she says. "I was born into the wrong
body." She had her sex change operation done in Bangkok. She has always been open about being a
transsexual, even when she ran for a seat in parliament last October.
Grodzka, 58, won that election. She now has a seat in the Polish parliament, the Sejm, for the new
libertarian party Palikot's Movement, which is particularly surprising in a country that is still seen as
socially conservative and deeply Catholic. "Poland is clearly in transition," she says. "Many things are
changing in our heads and hearts, although the established parties haven't noticed it yet."
The party is a colorful bunch. It includes gays and lesbians, feminists, Greens and computer geeks, and it
promptly captured 10 percent of the vote. Founder Janusz Palikot is fighting for more transparency in
politics and Internet freedom, and he wants to take a hard line with banks. His party members flatly reject
the traditional family image of the woman at the hearth and marriage as the only way of life.
"We have a lot in common with Germany's Pirate Party, but we also have a more clearly defined program.
For instance, we are decidedly pro-European," says Grodzka, a psychologist. But she doesn't belief that her
movement is ready to govern yet. Does she aspire to a ministerial portfolio in a future coalition
government? She laughs. "I can't imagine it. But who knows? Nothing is impossible in Poland these days."
Happier than the Average
Warsaw has an A side and a B side, the first being colorful, dynamic and cosmopolitan and the second
being gray, businesslike and characterized by bland, Soviet-era architecture. But both sides are optimistic.
Statistics show that hardly anyone in Europe works as much per year as the Poles, and that they are also
happier on average than other Europeans.
The Praga quarter, part of Warsaw's B side, is the home of "CD Projekt," and many employees refer to the
head of the company by the same name as his most famous project, a computer role-playing game: "The
Witcher." Marcin Iwinski, 39, in his ordinary-looking T-shirt and jeans, looks like a classic nerd -- one of
those garage inventors who rarely see the light of day. Sales have been rising sharply ever since he started
the company with friends in 1994. They now have more than 200 employees, and Iwinski has just hired
two new programmers from the Philippines.
The games, which are sold around the world, are purely Polish products. The character of the "witcher," for
example, stems from the novels of Andrzej Sapkowski, the "Polish Tolkien." The Polish death metal band
Vader contributes the music for the virtual fight scenes with creatures of the underworld. Iwinski, an
eternal child, still likes to play the heroic avenger in a Medieval fantasy world with his fellow board
members.
It was a bold decision for the young Poles, who went to school together (and often skipped class), to
venture into this segment. Role-playing games are among the most complex genres in the digital gaming
market. US companies employ entire legions of programmers and graphic artists to succeed in the field.
The Polish outsiders invested all of their savings in development. "We were motivated by the feeling that
even people like us, from gloomy Poland, could take on something like this," says Iwinski. During the
interview, he constantly types onto the keyboard of the MacBook resting on his knees. The office is also
equipped with a Ping-Pong table, a pool table and coffee machines -- all the accouterments of life at the
office. "We're crazy. We work almost around the clock," says Iwinski.
Achieving breakthroughs with innovative products is typical for the country. The economy is not supported
as much by major investors from the West as it is by mid-sized companies, often owned by their founders
or the founders' families. As a result, Poland is largely independent of economic fluctuations and the
goodwill of corporations that compete globally.
The Two Billion Dollar Man
For the young entrepreneurs at CD Projekt, the idea of holding resentments against Poland's neighbor to the
West is a foreign concept -- they see themselves as cosmopolitan. The same could be said for Poland's
richest man, who has homes in both Warsaw and Zrich, although he is probably most at home in his
Gulfstream private jet. According to the US business magazine Forbes, the man is worth about $2 billion.
The office of Jan Kulczyk, 61, is everything but bland, with expensive modern art on the walls and
Kulczyk's collectibles on display. And instead of folding chairs, visitors sit on substantial black leather
sofas and armchairs. The building on Krucza Street is in one of the city's best downtown neighborhoods.
In the 1980s Kulczyk, now wearing a tailored suit, his long hair neatly combed, used his father's savings to
import agricultural machinery from West Germany. It was a pioneering venture. After the fall of
communism, he became Volkswagen's official dealer in Poland, helping to establish the German

automaker's plant in Poznan. He used his income to invest in privatization ventures, such as the
telecommunications company Telekomunikacja Polska. It was a turbulent period. He was called to testify
as a witness in several corruption trials, and he was also the target of multiple investigations himself,
although they were abandoned.
Kulczyk today is involved in much larger business ventures. He produces oil in Nigeria, builds roads in
Afghanistan and exploits natural gas fields in Tanzania. He likes the Germans and he loves Europe, but
sees the future happening elsewhere. He believes that the continent has become lazy and is only interested
in maintaining its standard of living. "We're in a good position," he says. "The Polish economy, now that
used to be a dirty word. The world will have to revise its position, because it's a seal of quality today."
A trip through the Warsaw business world is like a journey in fast motion, with people who have some
catching up to do and are no longer willing to be deterred in their race to the top. Poland is no longer the
eternal victim, consumed by self-pity. The collective inferiority complex, shaped in history by murder,
partition and oppression, has been transformed into a new sense of self-worth and burning ambition.
City of Heroes
Gdansk is Poland's city of heroes, but it is a problem city at the same time, imbued with an independent
streak that has always been a thorn in the sides of the powerful. As long ago as the 15th century, the
confident citizens of the old trading city secured a high degree of independence from the Polish kings and
built magnificent patrician houses for themselves. Scots, the Dutch and, most of all, the Germans, put their
mark on the port city. Gdansk was long a European idyll, until the Wehrmacht arrived. Shots fired at the
city's Westerplatte peninsula on Sept. 1, 1939 marked the beginning of World War II. Large sections of the
old city were destroyed in the subsequent bombing.
Gdansk recovered from its wounds, but it never quite accepted being dictated to by the communists. It was
in Gdansk that shipyard workers went on strike in 1980, fighting for better living conditions with the union
they had founded, Solidarnosc (Solidarity), and eventually facing off against the entire system. The stuff of
legends is always good material for museums -- and a source of controversy for historians.
Professor Pawel Machcewicz, 46, doesn't avoid controversy. Everyone knows that Prime Minister Tusk,
whose electoral district is in Gdansk, is one of his personal friends. Yet no one believes that he allows
himself to be influenced by Tusk, or anyone else, when it comes to his new project: the "Museum of the
Second World War." The excavation is complete at the site on the banks of the Radunia Canal, within view
of the impressively restored old city, and a model of the spectacular building, made of red stone, glass and
steel, is already there to be admired. The grand opening is scheduled for the summer of 2014. "With our
museum, we want to supplement the Western image of World War II from an Eastern European
perspective," says Machcewicz.
To do so, he has networked with Czech, British and German historians. A new generation of young Polish
historians sits on the museum board. The memorial will provide a context that many are likely to find
objectionable. For instance, the exhibit designers are presenting history arranged by thematic areas. As a
result, both the Polish Home Army and the Munich-based White Rose resistance group will be featured in
the "Resistance" category. The museum will also portray the suffering of the civilian population -- both the
bombing of Warsaw and the air strikes on Dresden -- on the same floor.
"We were sharply attacked after unveiling our concept -- not from Russia or Germany, but from the Polish
right," says the professor. "But our goal is not to cure national complexes."
The Home of Beauty
Then he takes a deep breath and heads off for a walk. Small bars, cafs and galleries have sprung up
throughout the city, and most European languages can be heard along the city's elegant pedestrian
promenade. Gdansk is clearly in the process of reconnecting with its multicultural past, preparing for its bid
to be named the European Capital of Culture in 2016.
There are many examples of civilian courage to be found in Gdansk. When this courage to rally community
spirit shows itself at the right time, it can move mountains, bring about change and set the course of history.
One such case is that of streetcar driver Henryka Krzywonos, 59.
She remembers the day as if it were yesterday: Aug. 15, 1980. The shipyard workers had begun their strike,
but city employees had not dared to join them yet. The resolute streetcar driver identified herself with the
protestors at the docks, and made a spontaneous decision. She stopped the No. 15 streetcar she was driving
on a major street in front of the Baltic State Opera and announced: "This tram won't go any further. I too
am on strike!" None of the passengers objected. Instead, they applauded, first hesitantly and then
thunderously.

She was suspended. She joined Lech Walesa and was elected to the strike committee, the spearhead of the
resistance movement. "I had the biggest mouth and was the most radical, which is why I got the votes," she
says proudly. The people in power at the time saw themselves forced to grant the workers an independent
trade union, Solidarno, a decision that marked the beginning of the end of their power. Nevertheless, there
was still a brutal reprisal in store for the resistance movement. In December 1981, General Wojciech
Jaruzelski deployed his weapons and declared martial law. The plucky tram driver, refusing to be
intimidated, secretly printed flyers -- until the secret police knocked on her door. The men ransacked her
apartment and beat up Krzywonos, who was pregnant, leaving her lying in her blood.
City on the Hill
Krzywonos lost her child. But children, though not her own, became the focus of her life. She established a
children's' home and also raised some of the children in her own home, adopting 12 of them. The oldest is
now 42 and the youngest is 19. There are still swing sets in the small garden behind her house. After
writing about her experiences in an educational book on how to cope with the poorest of children, she
acquired heroic status beyond her involvement in Solidarnosc. The Polish magazine Polityka named her
"Woman of the Year" in 2010.
She has the prime minister's personal mobile phone number, and she occasionally calls Tusk when she has
something on her mind. She also stays in touch with Walesa. But nowadays the Solidarno hero, Nobel
Peace Prize winner and later Polish president spends more time giving speeches abroad than in the city.
Krzywonos knows that union membership has declined drastically, and that the shipyard in Gdansk has
shrunk dramatically because it is hardly profitable anymore. "I think it's a shame that the old fighters are at
odds with each other," says Krzywonos, the eternal activist.
Krakow is the most beautiful city in Poland, a Central European jewel and UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The travel agencies on the idyllic market square offer tours of the old churches, Chopin concerts and
nearby water parks -- and to Auschwitz, the Nazi extermination camp where more than a million Jews were
killed between 1940 and 1945.
Legend has it that the mythical ruler Krakus founded the city on Wawel Hill after killing the dragon that
had lived in a cave there. Everything in Krakow seems natural, undestroyed and harmonious -- almost
museum-like. But according to a United Nations report, modern-day Krakow also receives the highest
marks for worldwide investment in innovation. The city is a veritable think tank, with it 23 universities and
colleges, and about 200,000 students. Many are studying future-oriented IT subjects, preparing for Poland
to become the CeBIT partner country in Hannover next year.
In addition to the Polish kings, the country's greatest figures are buried in a crypt beneath the cathedral.
Two years ago, former President Lech Kaczynski was also buried there, in a sarcophagus framed in a sea of
white and red roses. For the country's archconservatives, the fact that he lies so prominently in state is an
appropriate appreciation of the former president. But his political opponents see it as presumptuous. They
accuse the Catholic Church and Kaczynski's party of operating a cult for what they see as a rather
unsuccessful, nationalist politician.
The Crash
On April 10, 2010, the then president was on his way to visit Katyn, where the Soviet secret police
executed almost 22,000 Poles in 1940. Moscow had long blamed the Germans for the massacre, and
Kaczynski was traveling to the site to attend the first-ever commemoration of the event in the presence of
leading Russian politicians.
The Tupolev carrying the president crashed in the morning fog while attempting to land at Smolensk in
Russia. The Polish pilots and the Russian air traffic controllers are widely believed to be responsible for the
disaster. In addition to the president, his wife Maria and the crew of the aircraft, 87 politicians, military
officials and members of the clergy died in the crash.
On the second anniversary of the tragedy, thousands of mourners marched through the streets of Krakow
and Warsaw, many wearing armbands in the national colors. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, 62, the president's twin
brother and former prime minister, marched at the head of the procession. "I have a feeling that Smolensk
was a Russian attack!" says Kaczynski, who heads the largest opposition movement, the Law and Justice
Party, to cheers from his supporters.
Kaczynski has tried in vain to step into his brother's footsteps. He ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in
2010 and suffered a significant loss in the 2011 parliamentary elections. In a book he published shortly
before the election, he implied that Angela Merkel was elected chancellor largely as a result of the support
of former members of the Stasi. He was widely derided for his views, which did not help his election
prospects.

In his early April speech, he refrained from launching into one of his once-typical tirades against Poland's
western neighbors. Instead, he took the Russians and their "machinations" to task. It is a disgrace, he said,
that Prime Minister Tusk essentially turned over the Smolensk investigation to the Russians, thereby
turning himself into Putin's stooge and an accomplice to his "cover-up plans."
Efficient and Future-Oriented
Surveys show that 74 percent of Poles today believe that they have benefited from German reunification
(even though the total investment volume to date for the 16 million people in the former states of East
Germany has been about 1.5 trillion, compared to less than 10 billion for Poland, with its population of
38 million). More than two-thirds of Poles have a positive view of Berlin's role in Europe. And 54 percent
of Poles are convinced that Germany takes the interests of other countries into account when implementing
its national interests.
If old clichs have any traction at all anymore, it is in the vast Polish countryside, which lags behind urban
development and remains caught up in bigotry and prejudice. A trip toward the Ukrainian border is a
journey into a period many believed Poland had already left behind. The rule of thumb is that the farther
one travels to the east, the worse the roads, the more decrepit the villages, the higher the unemployment and
the more grinding the poverty.
This is where the Kaczynski party recruits its potential voters, about 20 to 25 percent of the electorate.
Tough government spending cuts tend to be particularly devastating in these hinterlands -- such as the
recent move to raise the retirement age to 67. Poland isn't completely out of the woods yet.
Cars are lined up for several kilometers at the border with Ukraine, which is co-hosting the European
Football Championship with Poland. Each vehicle is checked, and the wait is about 24 hours. Those who
hope to be processed more quickly can expect to pay bribes. It's as if the German-Polish border had moved
600 kilometers to the east since Poland joined the EU and the visa-free travel Schengen zone, complete
with the wild markets, and smuggling of cigarettes and liquor. Ukraine is now to Poland what Poland once
was to Germany -- it is viewed as the slightly backward eastern neighbor.
Furthermore, just as Berlin behaved as Warsaw's generous advocate, Warsaw is now playing the
benevolent sponsor of Kiev. Unfortunately, since the end of the Orange Revolution, official Ukraine is no
longer necessarily interested in shifting further to the West.
But the people are voting with their feet. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians live more or less
continuously in Poland, taking advantage of opportunities in the low-wage sector. They take care of
children and the elderly, help out in hospitals and toil on construction sites in booming Polish cities. The
migrant workers do not have a poor image in Poland. And many of them, upon returning to Ukraine from
Poland, believe that they have seen the Promised Land -- so clean, so efficient and so future-oriented.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

URL:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/poland-has-become-the-success-story-of-easterneurope-a-834413.html

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