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President George W. Bush's visit to Poland this June not only coincides with
Poland's yearlong celebration of the Paderewski Year, marking the 60 th
anniversary of this great Pole's death, but it coincidentally takes place in the very
month which this great man died. There is still another American-Paderewski
coincidence with President Bush's visit this year. The year 2001 also marks the
110th anniversary of Paderewski's first of 20 concert tours of the USA.
In welcoming President Bush, it would be difficult not to remember the
1992 Warsaw visit of his father President George H. Bush (1989-93), when the
American head of state brought back the earthly remains of Poland's great
musician and patriot Ignacy Jan Paderewski. That remarkable funeral was a
celebration which lasted for several days. First the casket laid in state at the
Royal Castle, and then it was transferred to Holy Cross Church. Finally, a military
cortge escorted the casket to Old Town's St. John Cathedral, where a Requiem
Mass was celebrated and where the first Polish Prime Minister was entombed in
the cathedral crypt. After the funeral, President Bush gave a speech in the Castle
Square and following that, as people left to return home, old recordings of
Paderewski playing were broadcast over loudspeakers down the entire length of
Krakowskie Przedmiescie.
The Bushes, though, are not the only American presidents to have played
roles in immortalizing this hero who allowed millions to empathize with his music
and sympathize with the Polish cause. During World War I, former President
William Howard Taft (1909-13) served as the Honorary Chairman of the American
Committee of the Polish Victims' Relief Fund, an organization which Paderewski
and Henryk Sienkiewicz organized to aid hundreds of thousands of displaced
Poles in desperate need of food, clothing and shelter. President Woodrow Wilson
(1913-21), heeding Paderewski's advice, included the proposal for the creation of
an independent Poland as part of his Fourteen Points, the conditions on which the
USA was prepared to make peace with Germany at the end of WW I.
If it was President Wilson who "saved" the Polish nation, it would be future
President Herbert Hoover (1929-33), who, as Chairman of the postwar American
Relief Committee, would "feed" the Poland after the Great War. In 1919 and
1920, two million Polish children were able to be fed regularly with over several
hundred thousand tons of food supplied by the USA. In addition to this, 11,000
university students in Poland were also able to take advantage of regular free
meals. Hoover's willingness to help Poland stems from a 1896 debt incurred from
a California concert that President Hoover - then a student at Stanford University
- organized for Paderewski. The concert turned out to be a financial disaster with
ticket sales not covering the pianist's $2,000 honorarium. The magnanimous
Paderewski, however, instead of demanding the total intake from the concert,
told Hoover to use the money received to cover his expenses, keep 20% for
himself and then give him whatever remained. Needless to say, Hoover repaid
his debt to Paderewski a million times over.
When Paderewski died during WW II in 1941, it was President Franklin D.
Roosevelt (1933-1945) that gave him a funeral with full military honors and
offered him a temporary resting place in Washington's Arlington National
Cemetery until his remains could be returned to a free Poland. Paderewski's