What beautiful disasters

There's something compelling about disasters. This mysterious magnet, which, in the place of violent events, attracts bystanders like iron balls. It's fueling a hundred-gauge rumor, feeding off a sensation. This is the case today, and it surely was in the close past. All tragedies, accidents and disasters that have shaken interwar Poland are brought closer in its latest book Tomasz Specyał.

Although to the delight of the fans of the author it is simply a fat (near 350-page) volume, it does not exhaust the subject in any way. On the contrary, it is an author's review of events considered interesting by the author of this study, for very different reasons. So here we have large events, disasters that have killed dozens of people as well as individual accidents. There's no simple key here. And although everything is given in light form, which we owe to the effective pen of Tomasz Specyał, the author kept his historical care, retaining in this popularized position the methodology appropriate for historical work. He did not only a regular review of bibliography, but besides a solid review of sources, in peculiar press releases.

Thanks to this, the Special, giving us an authorial overview of the disasters, a bit accidentally, but full consciously, besides gave us an overview of the interwar press. Following notes on violent and dramatic events, we observe the evolution of interwar journalism in Poland. From short, essential and in any way discreet messages, to emotional epistles, covered with taste from the life of the victims, and frequently with gruesome photographs.

So what can we anticipate from the “Catastrophes II of the Republic”. Above all passionate and literary feudal descriptions of another dramatic events. Tragedy, which took place from Poznań to Vilnius, from sea depths to shooting peaks of Tatras. They touched everyone equally, simple workers (mostly miners), railwaymen, soldiers... And the unhealthy curiosity of the reptiles invariably awakened.

The advantage of the work is that in addition to these respective flagship events, which have been preserved in social memory in the national or even local dimension, most of the cases described were recalled by the peculiar from the darkness of memory. Like an infamous accident during the air show in Puck, during which there was... a bombardment of the audience.

"Catastrophe II Rzeczpospolita" is an interesting look into the past. It shows us a fragmentary picture, but alive and true. After all, past is besides a communicative of everyday life with so inevitably and regular human dramas. It's a different position from what we utilized to do by reading school textbooks. Importantly, the work of Specyal is deprived of pushy didactics and inexpensive moralism, which are a scourge of much of modern studies.

With a clear conscience I urge to you “Catastrophic II of the Republic of Poland”. Not only will they be large amusement for you, but they will besides extend your perception of that time. The only thing, but the giant flaw in the book is that it will inevitably eat you a fewer hours. But is that a flaw?

Przemysław Piasta

Tomasz Specyał, Disaster II Rzeczpospolita, Replica Publishing House, Poznań 2023