WHEN HE DIED HE WAS THE BEST VERSION OF PAWEŁ ADAMOWICZ WE KNEW

Paweł Adamowicz with his younger daughter Tereska in the Long Market at the Gdańsk Family Photo session. The event accompanied the Independence Day parade on the centennial of Poland’s independence, 11 November 2018

photo: Dariusz Kula

In Gdańsk as a Community, a book published in the last months of his life, Paweł Adamowicz wrote:  

“The city, its identity and people affect its mayor’s personality and transform it. There is a feedback here: the leader’s personality somewhat affects the citizens’ thinking.”

Everyone who had the opportunity to work with Paweł Adamowicz noticed this: he changed and worked on self-improvement to become not only a distinctive leader in politics, but most of all a versatile city manager, sensitive to the social needs of its inhabitants. He wrote: “As a student of the novelist Stefan Żeromski [called “the conscience of Polish literature] and the Lineages of the Defiant [a collection of essays on distinguished members of nineteenth-century Polish intelligentsia], I believe that the individual can make the world a better place, which I try to practice myself. And I’m sure that each and every one of us local-government people can do a lot of good.”

  “At the time of his death, he was the best version of Paweł Adamowicz we knew,” say his associates. “It’s a devastating loss for Gdańsk and all of Poland. He was only 54 and could have had achieved much more in public life.”

A HOUSE WITH A VIEW OF HISTORY

However, it was Gdańsk that became Paweł Adamowicz’s greatest passion, and the birth of Solidarity in August 1980 and the ensuing “Solidarity Carnival,” his most beautiful experience. He had not yet turned 15 when a wave of strikes against the communist regime swept through Poland. The historic events that changed the country took place nearby the Adamowicz family home in Mniszki St.: it was only 350 metres to Gdańsk Shipyard’s famous Gate No. 2, St Bridget’s Church was literally in their backyard. Paweł was proud that his older brother served as an altar boy at mass for the striking shipyard workers and later became a part of Lech Wałęsa’s office staff. And just when it seemed that Poland was straight on the road to freedom, the communists imposed martial law. Piotr Adamowicz was interned for several months. As a student at Gdańsk’s Secondary School No. 1, Paweł became involved in the opposition movement. He co-edited the Jedynka underground newsletter and was a member of a self-education club. He would also print and distribute underground papers that he and his brother would take on trains between Lublin, Kraków and Gdańsk. When studying law at the University of Gdańsk, he joined the Independent Students’ Union. Through his brother he became part of the Young Poland Movement led by Aleksander Hall. In May 1988, he became the leader of the students’ strike at the University of Gdańsk.

He became involved in the anti-communist opposition already as a secondary schooler, following in the footsteps of his older brother Piotr, who was incarcerated during martial law. In May 1988, Paweł Adamowicz led the students’ sit-down strike at the University of Gdańsk.

photo: Leszek Biernacki / KFP

Later, Paweł Adamowicz reminisced, “In the eighties I felt I really became part of my Gdańsk. Gdańsk was not just another city; it was a special city. When I said, “I’m from Gdańsk,” I really felt the power of this pronouncement.”

“Gdańsk meant Solidarity and Lech Wałęsa. Gdańsk, the defiant and freedom-loving. The true capital of independent Poland

This was the beating heart of the underground Solidarity.” The deepening economic crisis meant that the regime began negotiations with the hitherto-persecuted Solidarity leaders through the Catholic Church. The Round Table negotiations, which led to a systemic breakthrough, began in February 1989.

He had a cheerful disposition and didn’t take himself too seriously. He learned a lot in life, but he never learned to play the guitar. Paweł Adamowicz at the opening ceremony of Hard Rock Cafe in Gdańsk’s Long Market

photo: Jerzy Pinkas / www.gdansk.pl

“IT’S GOING TO BE A GOOD YEAR”

He was the Chairman of the Gdańsk City Council for four years and established himself as an architect and initiator of building the city’s brand. Even in communist Poland, Gdańsk entered into twinning agreements with foreign cities, but during Paweł Adamowicz’s tenure, international cooperation became an important feature of local government policy. Gdańsk renewed its contacts with Bremen (Gdańsk’s partner city since 1976) and established relationships with more cities. Typically for himself and clearly influenced by his roots in Vilnius, Paweł Adamowicz initiated many contacts with the East: in 1996, Ukraine’s Odessa and Kazakhstan’s Astana became Gdańsk’s sister cities, St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1997 and Vilnius in 1998. In May 1996, the Gdańsk City Council established two of the city’s highest honours: the Medal of Duke Mściwoj II and the Medal of St Adalbert. The former honours people and public institutions who have rendered distinguished services to Gdańsk. The latter is awarded for outstanding achievements and merits that transcend regional and national boundaries and work towards building tolerance and dialogue between various creeds and religions. The establishing of the Medal of St Adalbert was an introduction to the Gdańsk Millennium celebrations in 1997. The celebrations commemorated the first historical record of Gdańsk in the Life of St Adalbert, which describes the baptism of many Gdańskers by Bishop Adalbert in April 997. The millennium year commenced with a mass at the Vatican with representatives of the people of Gdańsk. Pope John Paul II remarked on the occasion with the words:

“Gdańsk is the city where the war began. Gdańsk is the city where peace began. If a year begins in Gdańsk, it’s going to be a good year.”

The official celebrations in Gdańsk began on 18 April at St Mary’s Basilica, where 20,000 people took part in a service concelebrated by Józef Cardinal Glemp, the Primate of Poland. After a reconstruction that took 50 years, Artus’ Court opened on 20 April, and a replica of a medieval boat that looked like the one which St Adalbert most likely sailed to Gdańsk in moored at the Great Crane. All told, there were several hundred celebrations and events. Representatives of 106 cities, members of the New Hanse, came to the meeting in Gdańsk on 26 June. The event was accompanied by a meeting between the Presidents of Poland and Germany, Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Roman Herzog. Four days later, at Artus’ Court, the former Presidents of the USA, George HW Bush, and Germany, Richard von Weizsaecker, came to Gdańsk and together with former Polish President Lech Wałęsa received honorary citizenship for “supporting the changes that began in Gdańsk and led to freedom.”

Mayor Paweł Adamowicz during the commemoration of the 79th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II at Westerplatte, 1 September 2018

photo. Jerzy Pinkas / www.gdansk.pl

THE APPLE OF THE MAYOR’S EYE 

Paweł Adamowicz was a history buff. He realised that its complicated, turbulent history provided Gdańsk with dates and significances that were special in more than just a Polish context. For him, they were a symbolic asset that, if properly taken advantage of, could bring the city tangible benefits as a unique place in Europe and the world: a must-see, worth living and running a business in.

Beginning in 1999, together with the girl and boy scouts of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz began to hold remembrances of the outbreak of World War II in Westerplatte. They would go there each year at dawn on 1 September to commemorate when the first shots were fired. By a Resolution of the Gdańsk City Council, the defenders of Westerplatte in 1939 received the city’s honorary citizenship. In 2003, due to the efforts of the city authorities, Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski issued a decree whereby the site and building of the former Polish Military Transit Depot became the Westerplatte Battlefield historic monument. In a few years, what had initially been a small commemoration drew increasing interest from successive Polish administrations. This culminated in 2009, on the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, with a government initiative developed in close collaboration with the local government. Thirty-one delegations from Europe and beyond and a thousand journalists came to Gdańsk. It was an unprecedented event, reported by the media worldwide.

Chancellor Angela Merkel unequivocally confirmed the Germans’ fault, “I commemorate all those who died due to the war unleashed by Germany. No nation suffered as much as Poland during the war. Whole villages were burned. Warsaw was completely destroyed. The scars remain, but awareness will help us shape the future.” Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin denounced the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact: “Over 53,000 Red Army soldiers died to liberate Gdańsk, and 600,000 were killed in Poland. Mistakes should be acknowledged, and our country has done so; we have admitted the morally unacceptable nature of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact.”

In 2008, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk presented the concept to create a Museum of the Second World War. From the beginning, the intent was to build a place of international importance, the likes of which Poland had never seen before: with emphasis placed on the fate and suffering of Polish civilians, and that of other nations, rather than on military history, which was to be just a background for the story of the consequences of the War. The City of Gdańsk provided the land for the construction, and the Museum of the Second World War opened to visitors in 2017.

The Museum was a complement to Gdańsk’s 20th-century story, whose focal points are: August 1980, Solidarity and the fall of communism in Poland; events that opened the door to systemic change in Europe.

Visiting the European Solidarity Centre construction site, September 2012

photo: Jerzy Pinkas / www.gdansk.pl

The European Solidarity Centre (ECS) was the proverbial apple of Paweł Adamowicz’s eye. Already in March 1998, when he was still the Chairman of the Gdańsk City Council, together with historian Jerzy Kukliński, he developed the Polish Roads to Freedom Solidarity Museum. A year and a half later, on the initiative of Mayor Adamowicz, the Solidarity Centre Foundation was established with a mission to establish the European Solidarity Centre. In 2009, a two-day conference on Solidarity and the Fall of Communism was held in Gdańsk and Warsaw. The guests included President of the European Commission Manuel Barroso and former Czech President Vaclav Havel, who flew to Gdańsk in spite of his failing health. Lech Wałęsa and Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the heroes of the Polish transformation, played the primary roles. Mikhail Gorbachev and former US President George HW Bush participated in the conference remotely. This raised the conference’s profile and resonated internationally. In 2010 Gdańsk celebrated the 30th anniversary of August 1980. The foundation stone for the ECS was laid in May 2011, and the opening ceremony took place on 30 August 2014, on the 34th anniversary of the victory of the Gdańsk shipyard workers’ strike. All this generated a very positive attitude towards Gdańsk. In January 2013, the world-famous French intellectual Guy Sorman proposed to make Gdańsk–the new capital of Europe. “The symbol of the new Union might be a new European capital. I propose Gdańsk, halfway between East and West, a city whose historical turns of fate will remind us of what it is that Europe protects us from. The old motto of the Gdańsk-born Solidarity movement – courage and moderation – might become the motto of the new federal Europe,” he wrote.

The European Solidarity Centre building was inaugurated on 30 August 2014, on the 34th anniversary of the victory of the strike in Gdańsk Shipyard. Paweł Adamowicz together with Lech Wałęsa and ECS Director Basil Kerski

photo: Grzegorz Mehring / Archiwum ECS

A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE

In April 2016, Mayor Paweł Adamowicz was named Local Government Leader of 2015 in a prestigious competition held by Rzeczpospolita daily. He received the award at a gala in Kraków. “We based our verdict on verified data, mainly economic and social statistics,” said Bogusław Chrabota, Rzeczpospolita’s editor-in-chief.

  Gdańsk turned out to be unrivalled. The award confirmed Gdańsk’s years-long winning streak; the city won awards and honourable mentions every year, which is why one of the gala hosts added, “Actually, he should have won Local Government Leader of the Decade.”

It was not immediately apparent that Gdańsk could be a spectacularly successful city.

2002-2003 brought an economic downturn because of a bear market in Europe and worldwide. The drop in revenues led to the limiting of current expenditures. The cost of bank loans rose too. A breakthrough came with Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004. Gdańsk quickly became a leader in obtaining UE funding.

In 2007-2013 Gdańsk and its city companies invested over 5 billion zloties while obtaining 3 billion zloties from the EU. The idea for Gdańsk to become a host city of the EURO 2012 European Football Championships became a driver of the city’s development. Preparations began already in 2007 when UEFA announced that Ukraine and Poland would be the co-hosts of this colossal event. Gdańsk was the first Polish city to volunteer its participation with the Polish Football Association.

A joyous moment: the opening of a tram line to Morena in 2015. The Mayor is looking toward a street that would link the Morena and Jasień districts. He could not have known that this street would be named Paweł Adamowicz Avenue.

photo: Jerzy Pinkas / www.gdansk.pl

EURO 2012 in Gdańsk not only led to the construction of the impressive football stadium in Letnica, but most of all led to gigantic infrastructural projects that allowed the city to catch up from the underdevelopment inherited from communist Poland. New Słowackiego St. (today’s Żołnierzy Wyklętych Avenue) was built to facilitate car traffic through Wrzeszcz to the airport; Lecha Wałęsa Airport got a new terminal and apron. The road between the airport and the seaport was supplemented with a tunnel under the River Martwa Wisła together with the extension of Sucharskiego Route all the way to Gdańsk’s southern ring road built for EURO 2012 by Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government. The East-West Route (today’s Armii Krajowej Ave.) to the Tri-City Ringroad, a project begun as early as in the 1990s, was also completed. The European Solidarity Centre and Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre were built. All this led to an economic domino effect: local, national and international capital became interested in investing in Gdańsk. Even in the 1990s, the Main Town, often erroneously referred to as the “old town,” was criticised as a place that went to sleep after eight o’clock, in contrast to other city centres. The investment projects brought by EURO 2012 changed this state of affairs. The number of pubs and restaurants grew from just 110 in 2006 to 475 in 2016. In 2006 there were 78 accommodation facilities of various types (including 16 hotels) with 9789 beds. Ten years later, in 2016, there were already 139 of them (including 46 hotels), with a total of 15,614 beds.

Paweł Adamowicz with his older daughter Antonina at EURO 2012. A big rainstorm fell in Gdańsk that day, so, just like the other fans, they found shelter under the awning of a restaurant in the Wybrzeże Theatre building.

photo: Bartosz Bańka

Another handful of data, this time from Gdańsk Airport: in 2006, Lech Wałęsa Airport handled 1.2 million passengers, by 2017, it was as much as 4.6 million. Gdańsk acquired flight connections to over 70 cities in Poland and Europe. When in 2016, Paweł Adamowicz again received Rzeczpospolita’s award for first place in the most demanding Best City-County Local Government Category, this time in Warsaw, Gdańsk was presented as a “City of big investment projects, business and financial responsibility.” Gdańsk’s mayor then said, “Most of all, I want to thank the people of Gdańsk that they still put their bets on me, which enables us to work for the city together and achieve success after success. Gdańsk is a great team. I want to thank all our civic organisations, businesspeople and residents, with whom Gdańsk is becoming a better and better place to live.

The first round of the local government elections in 2018. Mayor Adamowicz in front of the polling place at the Communication Technology School Complex. When he saw an elderly lady in a wheelchair, he immediately went to help her son. “Who will you vote for?” he asked. “Me?! For Pawełek!” she replied. The following day, Mayor Adamowicz told his staff to mount a wheelchair access there, which they did.

photo: Dominik Paszliński / www.gdansk.pl

THE KEY TO SUCCESS

Another deliberate project was to make Gdańsk a civic-minded and welcoming city. To make it a space where living is good and comfortable, and where everyone can find a place for themselves, including newcomers from far away. The aura of a modern and open city began to bring tangible effects. Gdańsk became one of the few cities in Poland from which people don’t flee, but where they come to look for their dreamplace on Earth. In Paweł Adamowicz’s eyes, the city’s residents were its biggest asset. It was they who became involved in building Gdańsk’s modern identity, who enriched the city with their talents, diligence and yearning for a better future. In Gdańsk as a Community, he wrote, “There is not a jot of separatism here, there is no desire to hide from the challenges of the modern world. There is a desire to work towards the common good. The city is a basic territorial unit that can quickly notice problems and solve them together with its ever more diverse and characteristic communities. It can work more efficiently than the government.”

People taking a street selfie with Mayor Adamowicz was a common sight, not just during election campaigns. This one was taken in Podwale Staromiejskie St. next to Gdańsk’s Market Hall.

photo: Grzegorz Mehring / www.gdansk.pl

The activeness of the people was the key to success. Paweł Adamowicz was happy to see the number of NGOs in Gdańsk increase. He was thrilled with the growth of the city’s volunteer sector. He set a good example by collecting for years for the Father Dutkiewicz Hospice at cemeteries or in the streets of the Main Town with a box for the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity. He regularly donated blood and loved to say so. A lesser-known aspect of his private activity was his financial support of poor large families and scholarships for gifted students who could not count on sup[port from their own families. Paweł Adamowicz was very interested in the indicators of civic activity in Gdańsk. Among the ways to stimulate it were city initiatives, such as the annual Civic Budget and the Civic Panels, a form of consultation between the local government and Gdańskers about important city matters. The Mayor demanded that the Gdańsk Statistical Office include a chapter called “Social Capital” in its annual compendium on the city’s social and economic situation. This data first appeared in 2012. In 2016, Gdańsku had 1523 official associations and 670 foundations; 217 had the status of public benefit organisations; 10 new non-governmental entities were formed; 191 public benefit organisations received 1% personal income tax donations.

The Mayor was very happy to see the community’s generosity towards the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity grow: 861,000 zloties were collected in 2017, while a year later, it was over 1.1 million. This happened when the government media did all they could to dissuade people from supporting this one of a kind charity drive.

Mayor Adamowicz easily became attached to people and places. He was a regular patron of barber Kazimierz Janta in Podwale Staromiejskie St. for almost a quarter-century.

photo: Private archive / repr. Grzegorz Mehring / www.gdansk.pl

LET ME TELL YOU WHO’S PERVERTED

In July 2016, Paweł Adamowicz visited the mosque in Gdańsk’s Oliwa district. The Muslim community hosted an eid dinner to mark the end of Ramadan. “We want to thank you because you are good to us,” said Khalid from Palestine, a large man in his forties. “By showing respect to the mayor of Gdańsk, we want to thank all the Gdańskers who have been good to us and are not afraid of us because they see us as ordinary people, as neighbours.”
“All religions have a way of bringing out the best in some people and leading others to commit terrible things,” replied Mayor Adamowicz.

This was right after Gdańsk’s authorities, spearheaded by Paweł Adamowicz, developed and adopted the Immigrant Integration Model. This pioneering document resulted from the joint effort of city officials, experts and the new inhabitants of Gdańsk that had come from abroad. It contains procedures to make it easier for people who do not speak Polish but want to live and work in the city to find their feet in their new environment. Aid and acceptance were what was to await them in Gdańsk, not marginalisation and exclusion.

This came at a price, for it also brought harsh criticism. The attacks from right-wing circles were a difficult experience for the Mayor. He wondered why so many people were reluctant to remember the plight of Polish emigres in the 1980s when martial law was imposed and how most of them were taken in by their new homelands.

Paweł Adamowicz as a guest of the mosque in Gdańsk’s Oliwa district. The Muslim community hosted a eid dinner to mark the end of Ramadan in July 2016.

photo: Dominik Paszliński / www.gdansk.pl

On the morning of 9 December 2016, Paweł Adamowicz and his daughter Antonina entered the Vatican through St Anne’s Gate. Wandering about somewhat, they reached a small hill with a beautiful 16th-century building, the Casina Pio IV, home to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Just like 73 other European mayors, he came at the invitation of Pope Francis. The meeting’s goal was a two-day conference: Refugees are Our Brothers and Sisters. Among Polish cities, next to Gdańsk, only Warsaw was invited. Those at the meeting were shocked by an emotional address of the Mayor of Lampedusa, Giusiu Nicolini, who told of how she received 366 coffins with the bodies of refugees who had perished off the island’s coasts. The coffins also had bodies of children, including that of an infant and its mother with an uncut umbilical cord.

With a Gdańsk flag in hand, Paweł Adamowicz joined a demonstration of the LGBT community in the summer of 2017 and spoke from the stage, “When you hear that someone is perverted, that someone is rotten, let me say that it is the one who incites hate that is perverted, the one who is hostile to others is the rotten one, the one who extends their arm in hate, who wants to cast a stone, who want to beat with a club, the one who speaks ill, who sends evil energy to another human being, is the one who is, forgive me, perverted.” Work began on the Gdańsk Equal Treatment Model in September. A 111-person team of experts diagnosed the situation of six groups singled out in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, creed or atheism, and disability. Then the team, in collaboration with city officials, used these diagnoses to recommend changes in city policy. The councillors from the Civic Coalition and All for Gdańsk Parties adopted the document in 2018 in the face of opposition from the councillors that belonged to the Law and Justice Party (PiS).