Culture in Exile
Polish artists also worked abroad, outside of occupied Europe. Arkady Fiedler, based in Britain with the Polish Armed Forces in the West wrote about the 303 Polish Fighter Squadron. Melchior Wańkowicz wrote about the Polish contribution to the capture of Monte Cassino in Italy. Other writers working abroad included Jan Lechoń, Antoni Słonimski, Kazimierz Wierzyński and Julian Tuwim. There were artists who performed for the Polish forces in the West as well as for the Polish forces in the East. Among musicians who performed for the Polish II Corps in a Polska Parada cabaret were Henryk Wars and Irena Anders. The most famous song of the soldiers fighting under the Allies was the Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino (The Red Poppies on Monte Cassino), composed by Feliks Konarski and Alfred Schultz in 1944. There were also Polish theaters in exile in both the East and the West. Several Polish painters, mostly soldiers of the Polish II Corps, kept working throughout the war, including Tadeusz Piotr Potworowski, Adam Kossowski, Marian Kratochwil, Bolesław Leitgeber and Stefan Knapp.
Read more about this topic: Polish Culture During World War II
Famous quotes containing the words culture and/or exile:
“The local is a shabby thing. There’s nothing worse than bringing us back down to our own little corner, our own territory, the radiant promiscuity of the face to face. A culture which has taken the risk of the universal, must perish by the universal.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass. Armenian refugees, Jewish refugees, refugees from Franco Spain. But a political leader or artistic figure is an exile. Thomas Mann yesterday, Theodorakis today. Exile is the noble and dignified term, while a refugee is more hapless.... What is implied in these nuances of social standing is the respect we pay to choice. The exile appears to have made a decision, while the refugee is the very image of helplessness.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)