'It Is My Duty to Carry on for Those Who Died': The Astounding Transformation of Jaroslaw Kaczynski

• Print
• E-Mail
• Feedback

"I want to make use of the explosion of good feelings created in our country by the tragedy of Smolensk," he says. He also reaches out to the Germans: "Our relations are 1,000 years old. We must think about the future." Previously, he had only wanted to lecture the German perpetrators -- telling Germans they didn't have enough respect for Poland's historical victims. Now Kaczynski is praising the postwar political platform of Germany's Christian Democratic Party under former Chancellor Konrad Adenauer as politics that could work well in "today's Poland."

The audience at the Hotel Europejski claps enthusiastically. Nobody here believes it possible that the candidate's transformation has been anything but authentic. Not even his opponents would accuse Kaczynski of artful marketing. Jaroslaw may be known as a hardened politician, but he is no phony. What he does have is a good gauge for the mood of his people.

""Many of us are longing for cohesion," says Warsaw sociologist Andrzej Richard. "Conflicts in Poland too often end in political carnage instead of a civilized discussion. That hurts people." When Kaczynski abandoned his practice of dividing Poland between good and evil, his PiS party soared in the polls, going from an approval rating of 25 percent to almost 40.

'In the Face of Tragedy, We Stood Together'

In the days after the Smolensk catastrophe, Monika Mizgier was one of the many people who lit candles in front of the presidential palace each day. "It just kept drawing me back there," she says. "In the face of the tragedy, we stood together."

For Mizgier, the issue was greater than merely the death of the president. Her father's uncle was one of those shot dead by the Soviet secret police at Katyn, near Smolensk in 1940. Lech Kaczynski and his delegation had been on their way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre when their plane crashed on April 10.

Mizgier, a slender woman with bright green eyes, wears her hair pulled back. Today, she is working in the PiS office in downtown Warsaw on Koszykowa Street 10. And she's not the kind of person one would expect in this unadorned room.

The 30-year-old attended an elite school in Brighton, England, and studied at the London School of Economics. "I could actually be looking for a job right now," she says. "But I decided to work for the PiS for two months -- as a volunteer, of course." After the tragedy in Smolensk, many Poles are no longer content just to think about themselves.

No pollster can say how the Poles will ultimately vote on June 20 -- or whether PiS will benefit from sympathy towards Kaczynski and the desire for national unity. But at the Warsaw regional office alone where Mizgier is volunteering until the election, "10 to 15" people are calling a day to say they want to join the Kaczynski party.

• Back
• 1
• | 2

• Part 1: The Astounding Transformation of Jaroslaw Kaczynski
• Part 2: 'A Longing for Cohesion'